Cannot change desktop background in new Yosemite OS

I have a similar problem .... I can change it, but when I restart the computer it reverts back to the old one

Same here -- I can change the background image, but it doesn't take. Reverts back to the Yosemite half-dome image within minutes, and it doesn't require rebooting for this to happen.

Just installed yosemite. Can not change background picture. click on new pic but does not change. I have to log out or restart machinge. As the mac is loging out you see the new picture for a brief moment. When mac turns on again the new picture is there. On another Mac Mini having installed yosemite It does properly allow me to change background pic. what is the deal?

After installing OS X Yosemite yesterday, from Mountain Lion, I can't load the Desktop and Screensaver pane in System Preferences. I have searched and found some suggestions to resolve this such as remove apple.desktop.plist but that didn't do it. So I went for a reinstall of Yosemite. But still got the same problem. One thing to mention when I had Mountain Lion I had my own photo as the desktop background which appeared when Yosemite started. I tried to change it but thats when I discovered desktop pane not loading so I deleted my photo and rebooted. Then Yosemite desktop picture loaded instead and I can't change it obviously.

Also obviously I can't see those lovely new Yosemite screen savers!

Can anyone offer any help?

Thanks

Fixed my problem. Cause: I have used a program like Finder caller Pathfinder use version 7. When this program is running I cannot change desktop pic. However, turned program off and desktop pic changes like a charm. So, must have pathfinder off in order to change desktop pic. Cannot recall if Maverick has same issue with pathfinder not allowing desktop to change. Hope this helps some of you.

I have the same problem. Every time my computer restarts, it changes back to the Yosemite background and takes away whatever other picture I have for background.

with me every time i try it comes up with preference error.

if anyone has a solution it would be appreciated.

I am having exactly the same issue, so this is not a solution.

Hopefully, someone will be able to help us!

Go to Finder and select your user/home folder. With that Finder window as the front window, either select Finder/View/Show View options or go command - J. When the View options opens, check ’Show Library Folder’. That should make your user library folder visible in your user/home folder. Select Library. Then go to Preferences/com.apple.desktop.plist and com.apple.finder.plist. Move the .plists to your desktop.

Re-launch Finder by restarting and test. If it works okay, delete the plists from the desktop.

If the same, return the .plists to where you got it from, overwriting the newer one.

Thanks to leonie for some information contained in this.

Thanks. It actually turned out my copy of Yosemite was corrupted when I ran disk utility. I had to delete my copy and then reinstall and now I no longer have this issue.

I updated to 10.10.1 and it seemed to fix my problem.

All the above did not work for me.

I got it working now, at least with a workaround. Took some time to figure out. I keep my iPhoto Library on an external disk and tried using a background image from there, but that didn't work. after each restart, the wallpaper reverted back to the (somewhat dull) rocks of Yosemite. I found out that when I choose an image sitting on my system drive where my home directory is, the wallpaper keeps to the one I choose.

So I think the location of the image on an external drive is the problem.

To get around this, I put the image on my home drive in 'images' and select that one. It works fine then.

A bit awkward, I'll ask Apple support about this.

Please be aware that you have several desktops (go to mission control to see them at the top of your screen).Yosemite allows you to select a different background for each screen. Once you have changed each desktop background individually, the old background should no longer appear.

I solved this by unchecking "Displays have separate Spaces" in the settings for mission control under systems preferences.