How to change the screen saver on a Mac

Anyone who has used a Mac for more than a few years has learned the location of the screen saver picker at least three times. It used to be half of a pane called Desktop & Screen Saver. Then it became an item of its own in the System Settings sidebar. In the current macOS it is inside Wallpaper. The setting itself has barely changed, but the path to it has, which is why most instructions found online point at a panel that is no longer there.

There is a second reason a screen saver appears not to work after being chosen, and it has nothing to do with the picker. Two different timers are involved, they live in two different panels, and one of them can stop the other from ever firing.

Where the panel is, by macOS version

The screen saver controls have moved twice. Checking which version is running saves a search through the sidebar.

macOS version	Where the screen saver controls are
macOS 12 Monterey and earlier	System Preferences, then Desktop & Screen Saver, then the Screen Saver tab
macOS 13 Ventura, 14 Sonoma, 15 Sequoia	System Settings, then Screen Saver in the sidebar
macOS 26 Tahoe and macOS 27 Golden Gate	System Settings, then Wallpaper in the sidebar, then Screen Saver

For the current versions, Apple's instruction is short.

Go to the System Settings app on your Mac. Click Wallpaper in the sidebar. (You may need to scroll down.) Click Screen Saver. Select Custom, then choose a screen saver from one of the available categories. Source: support.apple.com, read September 27, 2026

The word Custom in that sequence is the step most often missed. Screen Saver settings open with a choice between Automatic and Custom, and the list of categories is only usable once Custom is selected. Leaving it on Automatic and then clicking through the thumbnails produces the impression that nothing is being saved.

Scrolling down in the sidebar is also part of the instruction rather than a suggestion. Wallpaper sits well below the panels people use daily, and on a short window it is off screen entirely. Typing the word wallpaper into the search field at the top of System Settings is faster than scrolling for it.

What is actually in each category

The categories are not just folders of images. They behave differently, and one of them changes the desktop as well as the idle screen.

• macOS, which Apple describes as slow-motion images.
• Landscape, Cityscape, Underwater, and Earth aerials, four groups of slow-motion images that "show dramatic views".
• Mac, a set of gradient pill shapes that "form the word Mac in shifting color tones". This one appears in the macOS 27 guide and not in the macOS 26 one.
• Shuffle Aerials, slow-motion images that "change at an interval you set".
• Other, which Apple describes as "your photos and distinctive screen savers that allow you to show a message, see a Word of the Day, and more".

The aerials are the category with a step attached. In the settings reference Apple notes that if a download symbol appears next to an aerial name, "you need to click the image to download and use it". A freshly installed Mac has thumbnails for far more aerials than it holds video for, and selecting one without downloading it leaves the previous screen saver in place.

Aerials can also be pushed onto the desktop. Among the options Apple lists for the category is the ability to "turn on an aerial for your wallpaper, using the slow-motion aerial as your screen saver", which means the still frame the aerial ends on becomes the desktop picture. That is the behavior people notice as their wallpaper changing by itself after picking a screen saver. It is a setting, not a fault, and it is in the same options area.

Shuffle Aerials adds a frequency control. The settings reference describes choosing, from the Shuffle pop-up menu at the top of the window, how often to rotate through the aerials.

Two smaller controls in the same panel are easy to miss. The row labeled Current screen saver shows the name of what is selected and, in Apple's words, lets you "choose options (such as Automatic, Light, or Dark) if available", which is how a screen saver is matched to a dark desktop rather than fighting it. Inside Other there is also a Random button, described as shuffling through the screen savers, and an Options control at the top of the window that sets "color, speed, and more, based on the screen saver you select". Those options are per screen saver, so switching to a different one and back does not always preserve them.

Two timers, and the one that cancels the other

This is the part that explains most reports of a screen saver that never appears.

The Wallpaper panel holds a setting called Start Screen Saver, described as changing "how long your Mac can be inactive before the screen saver starts". That is the timer people set. Lock Screen settings hold two more: "Turn display off on battery when inactive" and "Turn display off on power adapter when inactive", each described as choosing how long the Mac can be inactive before the screen saver starts.

The interaction is stated plainly in the screen saver page: the screen saver starts whenever the Mac sits idle for the chosen time, "unless your display is turned off". A display timeout shorter than the screen saver delay means the screen goes black first and the screen saver never gets its turn. On a laptop this often looks like a screen saver that works when plugged in and not on battery, because the two display timeouts are set separately.

Older versions of macOS warned about this directly. The macOS 12 guide notes that "a warning symbol indicates if your display is set to turn off (as specified in Energy Saver preferences or Battery preferences) before the screen saver starts". The current panels do not show that warning, so the check has to be done by hand: open Lock Screen settings and confirm both display timeouts are longer than the Start Screen Saver delay.

For a screen saver that is meant to be seen, the workable order is a short screen saver delay, a longer display timeout, and a password requirement set separately. For a laptop where battery life matters more than the animation, the opposite order is the right one, and the screen saver simply will not run on battery.

Personal photos as the screen saver

Photos live inside the Other category rather than in a category of their own, which is why they are hard to find. Apple's sequence is specific.

Click Screen Saver, then select Custom. Scroll down to Other, then click Photos. Click Options. Click the pop-up menu, then choose Colors, Choose Folder, or Photo Library. Source: support.apple.com, read September 27, 2026

Three sources are offered, and the choice between them matters more than it looks. Photo Library pulls from the Photos app, which means the screen saver follows the library as it changes, including shared albums and anything imported later. Choose Folder points at a folder in the Finder, which keeps the set fixed and predictable. Colors is not photographs at all.

After picking a source, a Style button sets the transition, and the sequence ends with OK rather than by closing the window. Selections made in an options sheet and abandoned with the close button do not stick.

The preview is worth using before committing. Moving the pointer over the thumbnail at the top of the window reveals a Preview control that shows the screen saver full screen, and moving the pointer again stops it. A folder of portrait photos looks very different full screen than it does in a small thumbnail.

Starting and stopping it on purpose

Waiting out the timer is a poor way to test a screen saver. There are two documented ways to start it immediately.

Hot corners are the faster one. Apple's instructions put them under Desktop & Dock rather than with the screen saver: open System Settings, click Desktop & Dock in the sidebar, click Hot Corners, then choose an option from the pop-up menu for each corner and click Done. One detail is worth knowing before assigning them. Apple notes that "by default, the bottom-right hot corner is set to Quick Note", so that corner is already in use on a stock Mac, and the pointer reaching it produces a note rather than nothing.

Modifier keys make hot corners safer. Holding Command, Shift, Option or Control while choosing from the pop-up menus assigns the action to that key plus the corner, which stops a stray pointer from triggering it. On a machine used for presentations that is the difference between a usable hot corner and a liability.

The pop-up menu offers more than the screen saver, including Notification Center, Apps and Lock Screen. Lock Screen is the one to pick when the goal is privacy rather than an animation, because it covers the desktop and asks for the password in one movement instead of relying on the grace period set elsewhere. Assigning the screen saver to one corner and Lock Screen to another gives both behaviors without touching any timer.

The second way needs no setup at all: choosing Lock Screen from the Apple menu starts the screen saver. Stopping it is documented as pressing any key, moving the mouse, or touching the trackpad.

The password question, and the message on the lock screen

A screen saver hides the desktop. It does not lock the Mac. Those are separate settings, and the separation is the point of the Lock Screen panel.

The relevant control is "Require password after screen saver begins or display is turned off", which Apple describes as locking the Mac when it is left idle, with a choice of how much time passes before the password is required. A short screen saver delay with a long password grace period is the combination most people want: the desktop is covered quickly, and stepping away for a minute does not mean typing a password on return.

Apple also documents the limit of this. Locking the screen "doesn't prevent other users from turning off the Mac, restarting it, and logging in", with the advice to save work before leaving a Mac when using apps that do not save automatically. Anyone relying on a screen saver as security should read that sentence twice.

Show message when locked is the other setting in the same panel worth turning on, described as displaying a short message in the login window that "can also be used to provide contact information for a lost Mac".

What to change first

Open System Settings, click Wallpaper, click Screen Saver, and switch Use Screen Saver to Custom before choosing anything. Then open Lock Screen settings and make sure both display timeouts are longer than the Start Screen Saver delay, because that single mismatch is why a chosen screen saver never appears. While tidying what the Mac shows when nobody is at it, the row of icons it shows the rest of the time is the other half of the same job, and the features page covers what a menu bar manager for macOS can hide and reveal there. For that row specifically, Koffret is the tool aimed at it.