Skywall

Guide

How to change the wallpaper on a Mac.

Five steps in System Settings, plus the part the system hides: the moving Aerial films your Mac already has.

  1. 1

    Open System Settings

    Open the menu in the top-left corner of the screen and choose System Settings. On macOS Monterey and earlier it is called System Preferences.

  2. 2

    Pick Wallpaper in the sidebar

    Scroll the sidebar to Wallpaper. macOS 14 and later put Wallpaper and Screen Saver next to each other because they now share the same films.

  3. 3

    Choose a picture, a colour or an Aerial

    Dynamic Desktop shifts with the time of day, Aerials are the moving films shot from a helicopter, and Pictures are the stills. Click one and it applies immediately.

  4. 4

    Add your own

    Press Add Photo or Add Folder at the bottom of the picture list, or right-click any image in Finder and choose Set Desktop Picture.

  5. 5

    Set each display separately

    With a monitor plugged in, the Wallpaper pane shows one row per display. Pick a display first, then a wallpaper — macOS keeps them independent.

The films macOS keeps to itself

macOS bundles 152 Aerial films and shows only a few of them in System Settings. The rest download on demand and sit in the same folder, unused. Skywall lists all of them, plays any one as your wallpaper and screen saver, and never re-encodes a frame.

Browse all 152 Aerials →

Questions

How do I change the wallpaper on a Mac?
Open the menu in the top-left corner → System Settings → Wallpaper, then click any image. To use your own picture, right-click the file in Finder and choose Set Desktop Picture.
Can a Mac have a moving wallpaper?
Yes. macOS 14 and later bundle Aerial films and can play them on the desktop, not only as a screen saver. The system only exposes a handful in System Settings; Skywall opens the whole set of 152.
Why does my Mac keep resetting the wallpaper?
Usually because the image lives somewhere macOS loses track of — an external drive, a Photos library, or a folder in Downloads that gets cleared. Move the file into Pictures and set it again.
Where does macOS store wallpapers?
The stock images sit in /System/Library/Desktop Pictures. Aerial films are downloaded on demand into ~/Library/Application Support/com.apple.wallpaper/aerials/videos, which is exactly where Skywall puts them too.
How do I set a different wallpaper on each display?
Open the Wallpaper pane with both displays connected. It lists them separately — select a display, then pick its image.

Next: the exact wallpaper size for every Mac screen.