show date in screensaver mac os photos

Make sure: Show with clock is selected at the bottom of the System Preferences > Desktop & Screen Saver > Screen Saver pane.

Perhaps Carolyn misunderstood your question? You want to show the date a photo has been taken, not the current date and time, right? Carolyn's solution will ensure that the system time is shown as a clock overlay in the screensaver, very useful. But none of the current screensaver templates will show any metadata of the photos like titles or capture time.

In older versions of MacOS you could enable titles in the options of a screensaver, but this is no longer available since Yosemite.

I am using brute force to show the titles and date on the photos I m using in my screensaver albums.

• I duplicate the photo in Photos with "Image > Duplicate 1 photo". This will create just a second version, but not actually duplicate the original.
• I add a keyword to the copy "Annotated" or similar, so I can search for it.
• Then I edit the copy in Photos using the "markup" photos editing extension. It is available in Photos on Sierra. If you did not yet upgrade to Sierra consider to do so. Markup lets you write text and graphics into the photo, just you can do in Mail or Preview.
• To use "Markup", click Extensions, then "Markup". If it is not visible, click "More" to add it.
• Now I create a smart album with the rule "Keyword is annotated" and can select the photos with the text captions in the screensaver.

For example - my "Lighthouses Screensaver" is showing all photos with the location and the year, written directly into the photo.