Mountain Lion desktop wallpaper won't change!

Ok thats what you have to do....open pathfinder preferences and go to features....you are going to uncheck the box where it says show desktop background....the only box checked is going to be the first one that says show pathfinder desktop...now you should be able to change your background....hope i helped

if not let me know....maybe i find another solution...

that doesn't really solve the problem/bug with the OS. it just covers it over with pathfinder's desktop. i have pathfinder but do not always keep it running, so really that isn't a solution for me. thanks for your suggestion though.

Hi, I just bought a new $3,000 macbook pro and also can not change the desktop background and hold it. 😀 Apple needs to stop hirigin Microsoft employee's.

The work around was not bad though:

1) Set your background to the background you want.

2) Restart

3) Set your background to one of apples premade desktops.

4) Restart.

It seems to want to bring back the second to last background, so it ends up working as if it were my background choice.

This doesn't work for my 15" MBP w/ Retina either. I have submitted a Bug Report to Apple, maybe everyone should do the same:

hxxp://www.apple.com/feedback/macbookpro.html

This is irritating the heck out of me.

Well with some of the suggestions here (deleting the caches) I was able to fix my problem, but I still have one issue, a while back I hooked up a projector to my MBP and after that the white/light grey start up screen with Apple logo displays in standard def (800x600) rather than full-screen. It's not a big issue, but wouldn't mind fixing that 🙂 Any suggestions?

Hi guys. I was having the same problem and stubmled across this thread. After reading all the replies, a few people said about different drives etc. I upgraded my mac with a SSD a while ago. So I decided to boot into the HDD, change the wallpaper there, reboot into the SSD, and hey presto, the wallpaper had changed! I realise not everyone here has two drives so this won't solve everyones problem. But if you have two HDD's or a SSD + HDD, I would advise you to boot into the native drive and change the wallpaper, then you can continue using your prefered drive with the successfully changed wallpaper. Thanks for the help!

Ross.

Same problem here... and it's starting to drive me bonkers!

My desktop picture keeps reverting to a photo I set as a desktop background about a month ago - one of my own photos, not a preset (but by now I'm sick of the sight of my photo!). Every time I restart my rMBP I get the same picture, even when I've tried changing it to another of my own photos or a preset background option.

I've managed to temporarily stop it by disabling the automatic login as was previously suggested, but I don't want to have to log in every time I start up my mac.

It must be a Mountain Lion problem, but I never had the issue until after the 10.8.2 upgrade. I hope Apple sorts this out with 10.8.3!

In the case with my Mac Mini Quad running 10.8.2, switching to non-auto login appeared to help with one user account but not my wife's. Then it dawned on me, the photo she was trying to use was on an external drive with a lot of photos hooked up via Firewire800. When I went to select the photo via settings, it took a while to draw the photos to choose from, so I deduced if the delay was so long in settings, on boot its probably the same, and perhaps the delay causes a timeout and the OS defaults to an image on the local drive. So I moved the pic she wanted into photos on her local drive and voila, it loads as it should. So the bug in my case is the OS is not honoring the path to the photo in favor of a faster boot cycle.

I have a OSX 10.8.2 on 15' rMBP and my desktop picutre is stuck, I can not select a desktop picture from the prefrence panel. If i do on shutdown restart reboot it will reset to last desktop picture. However I have found out that I can change the 'defult' picture in iphoto 'set desktop picture'.. this work but is no good since I dont want to have to use iphoto to change my desktop picture all the time. I want to use the prefrence desktoppicture panel.It is a work around. Apple please fix this.

My snow-covered tree wallpaper that started out beautiful on my rMBP began looking stale and would not go away. The guide posted by Linc solved my issue. Thank you! (10.8.2)

Linc Davis wrote:

Quit System Preferences if it's running. In the Finder, hold down the option key and select Go ▹ Library from the menu bar. From the Library folder, delete the following item, if it exists:

Caches/com.apple.systempreferences

and move the following item to the Desktop:

Preferences/com.apple.desktop.plist

Launch System Preferences and test. If you still have the issue, put the item on the Desktop back where it came from and post again. Otherwise, delete the item.

I had this issue as well. Adding my photo to Library/Desktop Pictures solved the issue.

I had the same "stuck resolution" problem after connecting to an HDTV zapping the PRAM fixed it.

I hate to revive an old thread but I noticed this issue on one of my Macs, and I thought I'd share a plausible solution (it worked in my case).

If you are having trouble with setting a desktop image file from iPhoto '11 remaining after a shutdown/restart, it could be a maligned or corrupted iApps plist file.

Visit ~/Library/Preferences and find the file com.apple.iApps.plist, and place it in the Trash. Reboot your Mac (optional but recommended)

When you come back into OS X, open iPhoto, set your wallpaper. Try rebooting once or twice to ensure the wallpaper stays--if it does, then your iApps plist file was the culprit.

You can also recreate the .XML file for your library if the problem persists: link

I hope this is of some use to those who are having issues with Wallpaper and iPhoto in Mac OS X Mountain Lion. 🙂

Wow! What a crazy thread this has turned into! Just because of the wallpaper? I know, these little things drive us nuts. Are you still having the problem? Have you updated to OSX 10.8.3 yet?

Good luck, Richard