[HN Gopher] Every default macOS wallpaper
___________________________________________________________________
Every default macOS wallpaper
Author : jorgesborges
Score : 510 points
Date : 2024-02-15 16:29 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (512pixels.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (512pixels.net)
| alltrue1 wrote:
| Tiger is just so nostalgic
| johnbehnke wrote:
| The macOS screenshot library from Stephen is also excellent:
| https://512pixels.net/projects/aqua-screenshot-library/
| fumar wrote:
| Intense nostalgia. I remember my updating my MacBook from Tiger
| to Leopard and being inthralled with the new OS welcome video.
| It was a powerful feeling like a genuine leap was made after
| rebooting and new powers unlocked. 10.3 used Rokysopp's Eple,
| and I still love that song and album.
| xattt wrote:
| The Welcome videos were technological showcases. Where else
| were you going to see 1080p videos in 2005-2008?
| vvillena wrote:
| Looking back at the 10.4-10.7 era, I really miss those app
| icons, they were so easy to tell apart from each other just
| from shape. The rest of the design language was also a marvel
| in usability, it was so clear what everything was and how to
| interact with it.
| ruined wrote:
| (admirable) these images did incredible psychic damage to kde
| designers
|
| i used the catalina bg until late last year, when they started
| shipping the former appletv video backgrounds as the default,
| because it was just so good. seriously, after that on a 5k
| display, i thought i would never enjoy another desktop background
| _benj wrote:
| > (admirable) these images did incredible psychic damage to kde
| designers
|
| made me chuckle :-)
|
| But for real, there is something about a good wallpaper, at
| least for me, the wallpaper being the first thing I set on a
| new linux install.
|
| I fully believe that a solid default wallpaper can help with
| desktop manager adoption (i.e. kde, gnome, xfce4), at least for
| the bohemians types like me!
| dylan604 wrote:
| > the wallpaper being the first thing I set on a new linux
| install
|
| For me, that would be the last time I ever see it. I have so
| many windows open providing me quick access to whatever I
| need without flipping spaces or whatever, that I just never
| see the desktop.
|
| It's just one of those things that over time of using
| computers, I just don't care about it any more. I don't
| begrudge anyone that does, but it is just one of those funny
| things one realizes how time changes one's outlook
| Affric wrote:
| Do you have a recommendation for a good place to source
| wallpapers?
|
| With the photography it's one of the things Apple get so
| right about UX.
| SSLy wrote:
| unsplash perhaps?
| _thisdot wrote:
| Always loved the default wallpapers on Ubuntu too. I still
| have some old Ubuntu default wallpapers on my Mac!
| archargelod wrote:
| > the wallpaper being the first thing I set on a new linux
| install
|
| That's something I also always do. Even though I use i3 with
| 100% opaque windows (transparency is ugly and distracting
| IMO). I could only see wallpaper after startup and maybe 2-3
| times during the day if I'm switching from my usual workflow.
| But for some reason I always set the background. Perhaps an
| old habit from Windows XP days (Autumn is the best XP
| wallpaper, fight me).
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| I'll fight. Vortec Space is the best, after Bliss, and Red
| Moon Desert is a close third
| pkaye wrote:
| I don't use KDE but recently came upon some wallpapers on
| store.kde.org that I really liked. Particularly the Ketsa Color
| ones.
|
| https://store.kde.org/browse?cat=299&ord=latest
| neoberg wrote:
| Years ago in one of my previous jobs, we started to have issues
| with the internet connection multiple times a day. After a
| couple of days someone noticed that the issues happen whenever
| I go out for smoking.
|
| When they first introduced those aerial videos for Apple tv,
| someone made a screensaver out of them for MacOS and I was
| using that. It turns out whenever I went to smoke, my
| screensaver would activate and choke the network with 4k (5k?)
| glory.
| cmiller1 wrote:
| Here's an album containing all of the built in wallpapers in
| every version including for the classic Mac OS
| https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipNNQyeVrqxBdNmBkq9ILswi...
| wk_end wrote:
| Everything up through 10.6 makes me feel indescribably warm and
| fuzzy.
|
| I don't like Steve Jobs very much as a person, and I don't quite
| buy the myth that he was as much of a unique genius as some
| people believe, but...is it a coincidence that 10.7 marked the
| end of the (second) Jobs-era at Apple?
|
| ...or maybe it's just nostalgia.
| jwells89 wrote:
| > Everything up through 10.6 makes me feel indescribably warm
| and fuzzy.
|
| 10.2/10.3/10.4 are the ones that do it for me. Spent way too
| much time on my Macs through those years, through which I
| frequently used the default desktop pictures because they were
| so smooth and nice to look at, and each OS X release was nicer
| to use than the last which made for positive associations with
| each.
|
| 10.5/10.6 were good too, but I found the default desktops on
| those too busy and usually used something else. I also
| typically used custom themes by way of Shapeshifter[0] because
| I found the gray metal look of those releases too dark and
| modded my dock with themes found on MacThemes. As a result the
| default 10.5/10.6 desktops aren't emotionally evocative for me.
|
| I do however miss the 10.5/10.6 implementation of virtual
| desktops, which gave you a 2D grid to place desktops on instead
| of just a line.
|
| [0]: https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/ShapeShifter
| yrro wrote:
| Here are some ones from MacOS 7:
|
| https://osxdaily.com/2018/01/01/classic-mac-os-tiling-wallpa...
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Repeating bears in overalls is all I can see when I think
| System 7 desktop pattern.
| jwells89 wrote:
| For me it's the grass, stones, and star patterns. They look
| way too busy on modern displays but at 640x480 or 800x600
| they weren't too bad.
| mattl wrote:
| System 7... it didn't become Mac OS until 7.6 or something, and
| then Mac OS 8 came out very soon after that.
| MenhirMike wrote:
| Also conveniently made sure that clone manufacturers (who
| only had a license for System 7) didn't have a modern Mac OS
| anymore.
| mattl wrote:
| Right except that one clone maker they bought IIRC?
| jandrese wrote:
| Even more fun was the fact the wallpaper widget had a little
| pixel editor built in that let you make your own tiling
| pattern. I seem to recall that it updated the desktop in
| realtime as you changed the pixels so you always knew exactly
| what your pattern looked like tiled.
| 101008 wrote:
| Oh, memory unblocked! Didn't Windows 98 had something
| similar? It could be Win95 but I think it would be too much
| for that time, and for XP we already had background images in
| "good quality".
| jandrese wrote:
| I don't think Windows ever included anything like it with
| the OS. Windows 95 switched to having a giant JPEG
| background for the wow factor. Certainly there could have
| been a third party program that implemented that
| functionality, but I don't think Microsoft ever shipped it
| with the OS. Maybe as one of those optional fun pack things
| they used to offer?
| fourteenfour wrote:
| Windows 3.1 and 2000 definitely had a pattern editor. I
| think it was removed in XP.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| The one that mystifies me, is why Apple pulled their original
| Dubai At Night screensaver[0].
|
| [0] https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=766810966790684 (This seems
| to be the only place to find it online).
| mig39 wrote:
| I'd take a guess and say that Dubai is one of those places
| that's a bit paranoid of aerial imagery?
|
| Was this filmed with a drone or helicopter? Is it possible the
| right "permits" weren't obtained before flying over the rush
| hour traffic?
| madeofpalk wrote:
| There's still a daytime top-down Dubai screensaver video on
| Apple TV I believe.
| randgoog wrote:
| My Apple TV shows downtown LA.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Looks like there's five active Dubai screensavers. The
| one parent was talking about is missing.
| https://bzamayo.com/watch-all-the-apple-tv-aerial-video-
| scre... also https://aerial-videos.netlify.app/
|
| https://sylvan.apple.com/Videos/comp_DB_D011_C010_PSNK_DE
| NOI...
|
| https://sylvan.apple.com/Videos/comp_DB_D008_C010_PSNK_v2
| 1_S...
|
| https://sylvan.apple.com/Videos/comp_DB_D002_C003_PSNK_v0
| 4_S...
|
| https://sylvan.apple.com/Videos/comp_DB_D001_C001_PSNK_v0
| 6_S...
|
| https://sylvan.apple.com/Videos/comp_DB_D001_C005_COMP_PS
| NK_...
|
| Looks like they're hosted on a domain with invalid
| certificate, so your browser might take a bit of
| convincing to load them.
| randgoog wrote:
| Thank you for these! I think I'll have to enable a
| setting on mine to get the other screensavers.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I have no idea. It's an awesome video.
|
| I have a couple of friends that used to work for Apple, and
| neither one has any idea why.
| 10729287 wrote:
| Could something be copyrighted here ? Eiffel Tower isn't,
| but lights are :
| https://www.toureiffel.paris/en/business/use-image-of-
| eiffel...
| rgovostes wrote:
| I was in a room of Apple TV engineers when the screensaver of
| I-110 in LA came on. Everyone agreed that it caused mild
| anxiety. I'm glad I don't see it in the rotation anymore.
|
| https://bzamayo.com/watch-all-the-apple-tv-aerial-video-scre...
| ravetcofx wrote:
| I don't know why anyone would want to look at gross car
| dependent hell. Not something to be in awe of
| pimlottc wrote:
| The videos on this page don't work for me (tried Chrome and
| Firefox)
| zbirkenbuel wrote:
| It links off to `https://sylvan.apple.com/` which has a
| name mismatch cert error. If you follow the url in the
| console (and ignore the cert error) you can download it.
| Not super convenient but there you are.
| rvnx wrote:
| https://sylvan.apple.com/Videos/comp_LA_A005_C009_PSNK_ALT_
| v...
| Affric wrote:
| Weirdly I that always happened to me and I thought I was the
| only one.
| Gigachad wrote:
| It's a beautiful recording of a dystopic society.
| ace2358 wrote:
| I thought you could pick that categories in the settings, I
| swear I turned off the city ones cause I hate the city and I
| don't live i. A city.
| cwizou wrote:
| The files are still available in both 4K and 4K HDR versions, I
| still have them by default in Aerial if you miss them.
| viraptor wrote:
| That's weird, it immediately made me think of the Genshin
| impact loading screen. https://youtu.be/rBnfA4pXw6U
| mostlysimilar wrote:
| They're beautiful, but a small tangent... the latest macOS has a
| bug that repeatedly reverts the wallpaper to the default whenever
| I unplug/plug my external monitor and it's driving me crazy.
| pixelHD wrote:
| Happens to me too. I use a display link'd dell dock from work,
| with 3 monitors. Every few times i plug it in, the wall papers
| revert, and the wallpapervideoextension process starts soaking
| up ram and cpu cycles (I dont use video wallpapers at all, just
| static images from my folder as wallpapers everywhere). I've
| made it a habit to check the activity manager everyday after I
| plug in the mac, and kill that process if its taking up too
| much resources.
| jwells89 wrote:
| I think what's actually happening here is that spaces have
| separate desktop picture settings between displays.
|
| I noticed this a few days ago when moving a space from one
| monitor to the other and seeing its desktop picture change.
| Moving the space back to the original monitor restored the
| desktop picture.
|
| Not sure why it's this way, kind of an odd choice.
| mostlysimilar wrote:
| I think it's a deeper issue than that. I shouldn't have to
| set the wallpaper back both when I plug in and when I unplug.
| cwizou wrote:
| Sonoma did change the way wallpaper (and screensavers) get
| integrated (preferences have moved in an unusual
| place/preferences format too) which may be the root cause of
| this (although I admit I never hit that precise bug). Are you
| using classic images or some of the built in videos ?
| mostlysimilar wrote:
| It always defaults back to one of the new animated ones, and
| I always manually set it back to the solid black color
| option.
| cwizou wrote:
| If you are willing to try something, I would suggest an
| image (of your solid black color) instead.
|
| Because of how the new system work, I wouldn't be surprised
| the bug is limited to those solid color backgrounds (which
| are handled quite differently for historic reasons, and it
| could very well be why you get the error).
|
| The new wallpaper system is a bit of a mess, and solid
| colors have always been treated weirdly in their
| preferences.
| Bondi_Blue wrote:
| A few photographers recreated some of them:
|
| https://petapixel.com/2019/09/16/this-photographer-trio-recr...
|
| They also created one for Monterey since it didn't ship with
| exclusive landscape photography:
|
| https://www.techradar.com/news/photographers-make-their-own-...
| Theodores wrote:
| Even if you never use Apple Veblen Goods and have no idea how to
| use the funny keyboard, mouse and interface that defines Mac OSX,
| these desktop wallpapers are very familiar.
|
| This is remarkable because Apple is supposed to be about
| individuality. Changing the wallpaper could be two clicks away
| yet most Apple users stay with the stock wallpaper. I think they
| are focused on work rather than tinkering, with everyone happy
| with the stock wallpaper.
|
| Meanwhile, on Ubuntu, the first thing I change is the wallpaper.
| It goes. But then I have full screen apps and never see the
| wallpaper ever again.
|
| Personally I want the desktop wallpaper to be a black and white
| terminal window with it showing console messages from syslog,
| representing the guts of the machine.
| bredren wrote:
| Tangentially related, my pal had a photo similar to the Andromeda
| in macOS 10.7 Lion licensed via 500px->Getty Images and it was
| used on Colbert last night:
|
| https://i.imgur.com/wtnLpt8.jpeg
| zamadatix wrote:
| These seem to be upscaled, does anyone know where to find a
| collection of the original image files (not scaled or
| recompressed)?
| Thrymr wrote:
| Beyond the defaults, there were 7 different wallpapers available
| in 10.15 (Catalina): https://9to5mac.com/2019/09/29/macos-
| catalina-wallpapers/
| Ezhik wrote:
| I miss pre-Yosemite vibes and Aqua's skeuomorphic iteration.
|
| An elegant design language, for a more civilized age.
| avereveard wrote:
| The copyright claim from apple will be legendary
| david422 wrote:
| I'm curious about this. Somebody pulls a bunch of images from
| Apple and hosts them on their site. Surely this runs afoul of
| something.
|
| I have a small site that allows some user uploaded content, and
| I get random notices that threaten legal action unless I buy
| license (for users that have uploaded content from wherever).
| My response is just to take them down.
| sebastianconcpt wrote:
| You can't unsee it once seen:
|
| The last three releases as somehow vaginal canals.
| justinzollars wrote:
| The California thing is kinda played. We need a new theme.
| mvexel wrote:
| There is a link at the top for pre-OSX wallpapers. There was one
| in MacOS 7 or 8 that was called "platte pinda's" in Dutch meaning
| "flat(tened) peanuts)". That name mystified me at the time.
| Googling it now, there's only one result for that phrase,
| completely unrelated. Am I making this up?
| vanilla_nut wrote:
| I wish more OSes would work with independent photographers to
| compile a set of beautiful wallpapers. It used to feel easy to
| find good wallpaper online, but nowadays, especially with macOS's
| hiDPI settings and my personal desire for #000 true black
| wallpapers to hide notches and camera holes, it can feel very
| difficult. Search engines don't yield good results for 4k or 5k
| images, and a lot of the hi-res wallpaper subreddits have
| disappeared since their API debacle.
|
| I source solid wallpapers from a couple of OSes for use in macOS:
|
| * https://stories.gregannandale.com/raspberry-pi-desktop-image...
|
| * Ubuntu has some default hits (and misses):
| https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/every-ubuntu-default-wallpaper
|
| * Ubuntu hosts a wallpaper competition (most years) for
| photographers all over the world:
| https://ubuntu.com/blog/winners-of-the-21-10-wallpaper-compe...
|
| * and here's a somewhat-outdated repo of wallpapers from a bunch
| of Linux distros: https://github.com/LinuxKits/Distro-wallpapers
| -- I'm especially fond of the Elementary OS images.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > I wish more OSes would work with independent photographers to
| compile a set of beautiful wallpapers.
|
| Why though? Why should someone be subjected to all of this
| extra cruft when you can just find the images from websites? As
| long as Google image search exists, people will find whatever
| images they want to use. If you're thinking an OS vendor would
| do proper licensing, that's a nice thought, but the vast
| majority of people using custom wallpapers don't care about it.
| Kwpolska wrote:
| If you need to hide the dumb notch, I'd take my nice wallpaper,
| scale it down to the exact resolution, and just add a black bar
| as high as the menu bar is. This can be a bit ugly when the
| wallpaper appears without the menu bar, but it's a fine
| solution nonetheless. (I had to do this in Big Sur, since the
| OS thought my wallpaper works best with a black text on the
| menu bar, which wasn't actually too readable.)
| luuurker wrote:
| To "hide" the notch, try Top Notch: https://topnotch.app/
| bbrks wrote:
| Try searching at somewhere like wallhaven.cc[1], which
| aggregates wallpapers with good tagging, colour, size and
| ratio-based searches.
|
| A lot of the wallpapers there come from other sources like
| Flickr, interfacelift, Reddit, 4chan (for better or for worse,
| /wg/ isn't _too bad_ ), or just direct uploads.
|
| I wouldn't say credit is preserved particularly well at all
| times, which is a shame, but it is just a reverse image search
| away usually to find the original.
|
| [1] https://wallhaven.cc/
| xanderlewis wrote:
| I get all of mine from https://unsplash.com.
| edu wrote:
| +1 to unsplash
| jwells89 wrote:
| Another vote for wallhaven, have found several high quality
| 5k and 6k+ desktop pictures there, as well as some for odd
| aspect ratios (e.g. 5k portrait). Its predecessor Wallbase
| was also great.
|
| One thing I appreciate is that its users do a decent job of
| tagging images so it's easy to find all the work of a
| particular artist or location.
| xattt wrote:
| A lot of amateur wallpapers have this weird cliche aesthetic.
| It's the same two-thirds framing, and (at least to me) some
| intangible form of unresolved tension or a general feeling of
| the photographer trying too hard (vs an impromptu shot).
| AlexAndScripts wrote:
| It's infuriating finding an excellent wallpaper, only to find
| that it's 900 pixels wide or "4k" with so much compression it
| looks worse than uncompressed 720p. That and the grotesque
| photoshops that fill the results when looking for space
| wallpapers.
|
| On the plus side, Tineye can be quite helpful for finding
| things in their original size.
|
| And I only use 1080p!
| gaetgu wrote:
| Re: space wallpapers
|
| My favorite source for all space-related pictures are the
| Apollo flight journal photography archives[1].
|
| I'm not sure if there's a better resource, as-is you have to
| click through to see a higher resolution version to check if
| the picture is even in focus, but honestly that adds to the
| fun of it :)
|
| [1]:
| https://www.nasa.gov/history/afj/ap08fj/a08-photoindex.html
| AlexAndScripts wrote:
| Thank you. Beyond the brilliant photos, the archive itself
| is fascinating.
| delta_p_delta_x wrote:
| > That and the grotesque photoshops that fill the results
| when looking for space wallpapers
|
| Use the HST and JWST pages for space wallpaper sources[1][2].
| Make sure to check only the 'observation' checkbox; this
| filters out all the infographics, 'artist's impressions',
| simulations, etc.
|
| I suggest downloading the TIFF, opening this in some photo
| post-processing program (Lightroom, Darktable, RawTherapee,
| etc), and applying mild tone and colour adjustments, and then
| cropping to the exact resolution of your display.
|
| I get much better results this way.
|
| [1]: https://esahubble.org/images/search/
|
| [2]: https://esawebb.org/images/search/
| AlexAndScripts wrote:
| Thank you! There are some really excellent images there.
| mattlondon wrote:
| FWIW my windows 11 laptop I use has a new high quality
| wallpaper every day. I don't know where it gets the images
| from, but many are pretty cool even if they are a bit "too
| HDRy" at times.
| ambigious7777 wrote:
| Might it be Microsoft Bing's wallpaper[0] app?
|
| [0]: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/bing/bing-wallpaper
| mmsc wrote:
| http://boards.4chan.org/wg/
| keane wrote:
| Your comment took me back. 20 years ago the best place for this
| was InterfaceLIFT. I'm amazed to find they're still online
| today: https://interfacelift.com/wallpaper/downloads/date/any/
| KuzMenachem wrote:
| One thing I found annoying about the MBP mini LED screen is
| that macOS will not make the menu bar truly black, no matter
| how hard I've tried. Even using a #000000 picture as
| background, with 'Digital Color Meter' claiming that the screen
| is showing 000 everywhere, in dark environments it's obvious
| that the menu bar is a different color from the rest of the
| background.
| rickreynoldssf wrote:
| I still use a background tile from MacOS 7.5. I guess that makes
| me reallly old and a bit spectrumy
| binarymax wrote:
| The Catalina wallpaper threw me off guard when I first saw it. It
| looks exactly like a Bryce landscape I made in the late 90s. I
| spent some time trying to find it in my data archives but alas it
| is likely lost.
| davidhariri wrote:
| Louie Mantia has colored, re-rendered versions of the 10.0
| Cheetah Wallpaper that include Dark Mode versions. They are
| great: https://lmnt.me/blog/wallpapers/
| hcarvalhoalves wrote:
| These were the best ones IMO:
|
| https://wallpapertag.com/img/eyJpdiI6ImlFY2hqYStNSno4Z0dBcGY...
|
| https://wallpapertag.com/img/eyJpdiI6IlZ2N1R4bVpXYm9DVTRPS3l...
| post_break wrote:
| The fish one on my 2006 white plastic macbook takes me back.
| alltrue1 wrote:
| Still have mine and that is definitely my wallpaper
| yreg wrote:
| It was also used in many marketing materials for the original
| iPhone. (Although the default wallpaper was the Earth one, I
| believe.)
| xattt wrote:
| 9:42
| data-ottawa wrote:
| For me it's the grass one, and creating Adium themes to
| complement it!
| xanderlewis wrote:
| The second one. Yes!
| xattt wrote:
| The lore behind the second one was that it was taken by Steve
| Jobs.
|
| I remember seeing it on the Leopard keynote. It was glorious
| with the translucent menubar that ditched the rounded
| corners.
| Sunspark wrote:
| Debatable. They're visually too busy and noisy to see all the
| time.
| Someone wrote:
| I think laptop users rarely see much of their wallpaper, and
| that's a significant fraction of users.
|
| You could even argue that, if you see your wallpaper close to
| "all the time", your monitors are larger than you need most
| of the time.
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| Jokes on you, I give my terminals a slight opacity so I can
| see the wallpaper all the time.
|
| Sometimes I'll keep an empty workspace up just to declutter
| and focus on something on the other monitor.
| StefanBatory wrote:
| Same - I always keep some opacity on my windows and I use
| gaps on i3
|
| It's not necessary, I could as well set black wallpaper
| and no gaps, but I like it so it's good enough excuse ;)
| MSFT_Edging wrote:
| It just feels good, like soft, indirect, amber lighting.
| nomel wrote:
| I agree completely. The best wallpaper is pure black. I
| haven't used anything other than black in ~20 years.
| jacurtis wrote:
| black wallpaper will be awesome for battery life once OLED
| laptop screens come out
| hbn wrote:
| I mean I guess if your primary use of your laptop is
| sitting on the desktop with no windows open, just staring
| at it?
| tambourine_man wrote:
| 50% gray is the way to go. I've been doing it since we had
| to simulate gray by dithering black and white pixels.
| nxobject wrote:
| I agree. Black and white often pop up against certain
| types of content (e.g. white spreadsheets on black
| background, dark mode terminals on white), but gray's a
| good compromise.
| marpstar wrote:
| I worked at Best Buy circa 2005 and we had a single Mac Mini on
| the floor that had the fish wallpaper and it always drew me in.
| I had no interest in Macs at the time, but there was something
| alluring behind that wallpaper.
| jrmg wrote:
| I love the grass backdrop, but that folded over tip near the
| center-top always jumps out at me.
| lldb wrote:
| I noticed they recently brought back the clownfish as a built
| in option on iPhone!
| justworkout wrote:
| These were the exact two I had in mind. I never used default
| wallpapers aside from these two.
| danans wrote:
| Tangentially, I find wallpaper to be fascinating as it's one of
| the few aspects of desktop UX that is basically still 100% open
| to self-expression.
|
| For functional reasons, every other desktop UI surface has
| converged with only a few minor variations. But the static
| desktop OS background - perhaps because it has no inherent
| functional purpose and remains covered most of the time - remains
| as a canvas.
| nullhole wrote:
| > the static desktop OS background
|
| Eons ago, there was a (paid) 3rd-party program for MacOS
| Classic that would give you a slideshow desktop background. The
| images were of the Golden Gate bridge, and were a timelapse
| over the course of a day. The changes were (afair) synced to
| your local solar time, so 'sunset' in the desktop background
| would line up with your local sunset.
|
| I'd have to search to find the name of the program, but I kind
| of wish I had it back.
| dylan604 wrote:
| In classic Apple fashion, that's built in to the OS now.
| lgl wrote:
| Well, it's not for MacOS, but software to run animated
| wallpapers exist for Windows.
|
| One example is the very popular WallpaperEngine [0]. Another
| cool one (and open source) is Lively Wallpaper [1].
|
| Selfless plug: I've also developed and released LumoTray [2]
| which is a wallpaper/screensaver manager for windows with
| some other extra features but without any animated wallpapers
| except slideshows as I still find it a bit of a resource
| waste for something that I rarely see.
|
| [0] https://www.wallpaperengine.io
|
| [1] https://www.rocksdanister.com/lively/
|
| [2] https://lumotray.com/
| p_l wrote:
| I think ActiveDesktop still works, too
| cwizou wrote:
| To be fair, most built in wallpapers in macOS do have a
| day/night version (for example Sonoma), or multiple versions
| with sunrise/day/sunset/night (Ventura, Monterey, Big sur).
| Apple does call them Dynamic backgrounds and they will switch
| automatically during the day.
|
| Also, I hate to do this but if I'm allowed, tinniest plug, I
| do maintain a screensaver project for macOS that does video
| both screensaver and wallpaper integration with solar time
| adaptation : https://aerialscreensaver.github.io (the default
| download will give you the app that does the wallpaper
| integration).
| jwells89 wrote:
| There was one of these apps for early versions of OS X too.
|
| I've searched for it several times, but as far as the web is
| concerned it never existed. Would really like to find it
| because its default desktop picture was pleasant (during the
| day, a blue sky over a field of flowers if I recall
| correctly) and it would be nice to see it again.
|
| Sadly a lot of early-mid-00s Mac shareware like that has
| seemingly vanished.
| squiffsquiff wrote:
| Current versions of MacOS allow you to have a slideshow for
| your wallpaper
| jwells89 wrote:
| I leave at least a few pixels around the edges of windows to
| let my desktop picture show through, partially because that's
| some of the little remaining customization but also because
| having my screens filled to the brim with windows negatively
| impacts my mood, as silly as that sounds. The desktops I choose
| usually carry a positive and/or calming vibe and that's felt
| during my workday if some of it can show through.
| BizarreByte wrote:
| 10.3 and 10.4 were the best ones and I still use one of those two
| to this day.
| felixding wrote:
| Same!
| JoshGlazebrook wrote:
| Can we do this with iOS wallpapers too? I still have fond
| memories of those fish from the very first phone. They brought it
| back in iOS 16 thankfully.
| nrabulinski wrote:
| To me leopard is the most iconic. In my head it's _the_ wallpaper
| of modern macOS. I still remember back in the day that was the
| first thing I downloaded when I tried to make my Vista PC look at
| least a little bit like a Mac :-)
| kccqzy wrote:
| To me the default wallpaper on Tiger is the most iconic. I'm
| probably biased because Tiger is the first version I used (on a
| borrowed computer!).
| nlunbeck wrote:
| Agreed, it felt like such a major leap in modernity from the
| Aqua wallpapers. I still think of it as the definitive 2000s
| Mac OS X wallpaper, it really was everywhere in no way any of
| their wallpapers have been since. It was like the _Bliss_
| counterpart to Mac OS X
| willio58 wrote:
| Same, leopard was the version that just came out when I bought
| my first white Macbook with money I saved as a kid shoveling
| driveways for an entire winter (and admittedly got paid too
| much by neighbors to do so).
|
| I remember being in awe as I set up that computer and that was
| the first computer I started writing some HTML on. All these
| years and 2 Macbooks later my career is in web dev and I
| _still_ love MacOS.
| dbtc wrote:
| A change from abstract to space after 2005.
|
| A change from space to earth after 2012.
|
| And back to abstract in 2021.
| Kehvarl wrote:
| My last mac was a Powerbook g4 12 inch with OS 10.3 Panther, but
| for some reason I clearly recall the 10.0 wallpaper being the one
| it came with and the one I stared at for years. The proper 10.3
| wallpaper doesn't look familiar at all.
| concinds wrote:
| Just got a MacBook Air from the store, latest Sonoma 14.3.1, and
| the default wallpaper was the photorealistic one ("Sonoma
| Horizon"), not the abstract one.
| BjoernKW wrote:
| The Catalina one always used to remind me of a certain island
| somewhere deep in the Caribbean.
|
| Seems like I'm not the only one:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/MonkeyIsland/comments/dgwm03/the_ne...
| rezmason wrote:
| Don't forget the OS 9 wallpapers:
|
| https://512pixels.net/projects/mac-os-9-5k-wallpapers
|
| My favorites among these are the gradient-rich desktops that
| dropped in Mac OS 8.5 back in '98, like those UFO ones.
|
| That's when the OS gained support for icons with 24-bit color and
| 8-bit masks, which are the direct ancestors to today's 1024x1024
| 32-bit app icons. Perhaps to commemorate this full leveling up of
| the classic Mac desktop to millions of colors, Apple hired a
| small team of designers to custom make the UFO, Capsule and Tub
| desktop pictures.
|
| Screen sized gradients between two relatively close colors almost
| always land in the sandbar of banding or dithering in order to
| quantize all those subtle variations to the limited color depth.
| But these desktops do a beautiful job at avoiding that. I'm not
| sure, but I think they achieved it by color grading a zero-to-255
| 3D render with a high bits/channel ratio in Photoshop, tuning the
| grade and quantizing to 8 bits per pixel from time to time as a
| sort of gamut warning. Any problematic areas could then be
| "buffed out" with careful blend mode shenanigans on the
| boundaries.
| djhn wrote:
| Wow, I always thought there was something strange about those
| gradients, and you're right! The distinct lack of banding
| despite the limited variation in hue!
| bandergirl wrote:
| Speaking as an outsider that has no emotional attachment to
| those wallpapers: wow, they're really awful (except maybe the
| first one)
|
| I mean one of them is bright green and red? The holy grail of
| what _not_ to set as a background, as well as one of the most
| awful color combinations (unless it's Christmas)
| sithadmin wrote:
| That was the era of rainbow-colored iMacs. Seeing folks use
| the default wallpaper that matched the case accent color was
| fairly typical.
| geon wrote:
| I kind of miss the original aqua white striped theme:
| https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:720/format:webp/1*Xwuj...
| Yhippa wrote:
| I can remember eras of my life gone by with these wallpapers.
| divbzero wrote:
| This is the analogous website with every Apple TV aerial
| screensaver:
|
| https://bzamayo.com/watch-all-the-apple-tv-aerial-video-scre...
| Sunspark wrote:
| Not a critique of MacOS here, but generally stock OS bundled
| wallpapers for any device are always so generic. Probably a lot
| of effort goes into picking ones that offends the least amount of
| people, hence the trend in recent years of just colours and
| shapes. Only the colour-blind would be offended by those.
| uticus wrote:
| What was the one with rotating windmill-like propeller geometric
| shapes? Or maybe that is a screensaver I'm thinking of...
| lizardking wrote:
| Strong nostalgia for this one
|
| https://512pixels.net/downloads/macos-wallpapers-thumbs/10-2...
|
| Takes me back to my dorm room on my 13-inch iBook.
| Lammy wrote:
| See also, for the other (non-default) Mac OS X walls:
| https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/macos-desktop-pictures
| marsissippi wrote:
| So cool!
|
| I made this thing that breaks down each image by fraction of each
| color used
|
| https://www.julyp.com/shared/018dae67-9ec0-7191-bd9f-7fe9c85...
|
| Looking at it like a source of color palettes, I really like
| Venture more...
| freitzkriesler2 wrote:
| I forgot how much I missed those blue cones.
|
| This and bliss put me in a wicked nostalgic mood.
| jsz0 wrote:
| I'm not a big fan of any of the modern macOS or iOS wallpapers.
| They're so busy it's hard to even read text labels on top of
| them. My goto background for many years was Leopard Server but it
| was eventually replaced by the Linen tile texture that IIRC
| wasn't a default wallpaper choice but could be copied out of the
| system folder.
| chris_wot wrote:
| The default wallpaper for Sonoma for me has been an interactive
| image of what looks like wine country in France?
| stbtrax wrote:
| Sonoma is wine country in Northern California
| Erazal wrote:
| I'm obsessed with having a clean desktop, and beautiful
| wallpapers. Until recently, I used a neat little app for MacOS
| called Artdiario [1] that would update my wallpaper every day
| with a beautiful piece of art and I LOVED it.
|
| "Used to" because it looks it's not updated anymore since around
| 2 months :(
|
| Was thinking of re-creating the same "open-source" version of it,
| that would pick and show art from museums around the world every
| day [2].
|
| Would some of you be interested?
|
| And if by chance you're reading me Jimmy - I love the app and
| would be happy to help maintain / curate it!
|
| [1] https://www.artdiario.com/
|
| [2] a ton of museums provide free access to their art, such as
| the National Gallery of Art - https://www.nga.gov/open-access-
| images.html
| hisnameisjimmy wrote:
| Yo I would love the help to maintain/curate. A combination of
| the holidays and a really aggressive start to the new year at
| work made me fall off the update wagon. Email me and we can
| setup a time to chat.
|
| Edit: This was really nice to see/hear. Thank you for
| appreciating this publicly!
| Erazal wrote:
| I've sent out an e-mail :)
|
| And yes I LOVE it! I've installed on at least ~4 different
| machines of friends as well!
| Erazal wrote:
| email sent from erazal (backwards).rossillon[at].gmail.com
| watersb wrote:
| You can run screen savers on your Mac desktop (wallpaper), buy
| running the "ScreenSaverEngine" with the "-background" option
| from the command line.
|
| The executable is inside the screen saver application package.
| cd
| /System/Library/CoreServices/ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS
| ./ScreenSaverEngine -background
|
| (Earlier versions of macOS have the app under
| /System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources )
| xyzwave wrote:
| Independent of location on disk: `open -b
| com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine`
| mattl wrote:
| Meanwhile I have the same generic blue background from Rhapsody
| still on all my devices.
| runlevel1 wrote:
| As in Mac OS X before it was Mac OS X? That Rhapsody?
| mattl wrote:
| Yep. It was released as Mac OS X Server 1.0 briefly.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| Things brings back so many great memories.
|
| I got into computing just as OS X launched. I installed every
| version with great anticipation. A ritual with my Mac geek
| friends every year.
|
| I feel we have lost that excitement in todays world.
| scq wrote:
| It's not mentioned on the page, but at least 10.0 to 10.8 are AI
| upscaled -- you can tell from the artifacts when looking at the
| image closely.
|
| I don't think it's reasonable to call this an "archive", as the
| link does, when the images have undisclosed changes to them and
| are clearly not the original files :/
| Retr0id wrote:
| Thank you for saying it, undisclosed "enhancements" like this
| just remind me of the botched Ecce Homo painting restoration. A
| request to the world: If you're going to post an "enhanced"
| version of something, at least share the original too.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Hmm, this forum post[0] is from 2012 and includes a high res
| photo from the OS, but it seems nearly visually identical to
| the photo on 512pixels.net. I don't see almost any artifacts
| that give me the impression of AI upscaling.
|
| 0: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/10-8-new-wallpaper-
| back...
| dredmorbius wrote:
| I'd stumbled across this site just recently after realising that
| the MacOS Monterey upgrade apparently deletes the Yosemite
| wallpapers. Which is quite unfortunate.
| zgs wrote:
| I was far more used to the MacsBug screen of despair.
| chungy wrote:
| Those 10.0-10.4 wallpapers remind me a lot of wallpapers I made
| with Fyre back when I ran Windows 95 as a primary.
| reify wrote:
| Running out of ideas to promote the website
|
| More boring and uninteresting Apple boringness
|
| What is so interesting about wallpapers? Nothing!
|
| The typical self promotion through HN.
|
| Become a member of 512 Pixels. Support projects like these,
| receive exclusive content in the monthly newsletter and enjoy
| advanced screenings of my YouTube videos.
|
| Fraidy not old boy
|
| A fly in the ointment
| globular-toast wrote:
| I remember when having a wallpaper was a big deal. I have a few
| screenshots of my desktops over the years and they do bring back
| memories. But I've used a tiling window manager for the past 5
| years or so and there's no point having a wallpaper. I consider
| it a waste of screen space now.
| interludead wrote:
| 10.4 Tiger - my favorite
| pompino wrote:
| The 10.4 wallpaper brings back some nostalgia for me. It was the
| first time I could afford to buy a new laptop and I splurged on
| the 06 core duo macbook pro.
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