Changing your Mac's wallpaper is one of the quickest ways to personalize your computer and give your desktop a fresh look. Whether you want to use a favorite photo, one of Apple's built-in images, or a picture you found online, the process takes just a few clicks.
macOS offers several wallpaper options, including dynamic images that change throughout the day, aerial views, and solid colors for a minimalist approach. You can even set your Mac to cycle through multiple images automatically.
In this guide, we'll walk you through the quick steps to change your wallpaper on any recent version of macOS, so you can customize your desktop exactly how you want it.
1. Open system settings
Click the Apple menu in the top-left corner of your screen and select System Settings from the dropdown menu.
In older macOS versions, this may be called System Preferences instead.
2. Navigate to wallpaper
In the System Settings window, look for Wallpaper in the sidebar menu and click on it. This will bring up all available wallpaper options for your desktop background.
3. Choose your wallpaper
Once in the Wallpaper section, you'll see several categories to choose from:
Apple Wallpapers: macOS comes with a variety of professionally designed wallpapers organized by collections.
Add Photo/Album: Click this option to select a personal photo from your Photos app or from a folder on your Mac.
Dynamic Wallpapers: These specially designed backgrounds change their appearance based on the time of day, shifting from daylight to evening scenes.
Aerials: These high-definition images feature various perspectives of landscapes, cityscapes, and underwater scenes.
Colors: If you prefer minimalism, you can select a solid color for your desktop background.
Click on any wallpaper thumbnail to instantly apply it to your desktop.
4. Adjust image fit
For photos and custom images, you can control how the image fits your screen. Look for the pop-up menu next to the wallpaper thumbnail and select from the options available.
The options include Fill Screen (fills but may crop), Fit to Screen (shows entire image with possible black bars), Stretch to Fill (covers by stretching), Center (places at original size), or Tile (the image repeats).
5. Use an image found online
If you're browsing the web in Safari and find the perfect wallpaper, you don't even need to download it first.
All you have to do is right click on the image in your browser and select Use Image as Desktop Picture from the context menu. The image will automatically be set as your wallpaper.
Unfortunately, this feature doesn't work with Chrome.
And there we have it! You now know how to change your Mac wallpaper. While you're here, why not take a look at some of our other useful guides.
Check out you can schedule your Mac to turn off and on — here's how and how to troubleshoot and reset Bluetooth on Mac. You can also discover how to change screenshot location on Mac using Terminal.
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