This panel offers two ways to show off macOS’s glamorous graphics features: desktop pictures and screensavers.
MacOS comes with a mountain of desktop pictures, ranging from National Geographic–style nature photos to plain solid colors. To install a new background picture, first choose one of the image categories in the list at the left side of the window, as shown in Figure 10-12.
Your choices include Desktop Pictures (muted, soft-focus swishes and swirls and a few nature shots—like the Sierra mountains shots); Nature (bugs, water, outer space); Plants (flowers, soft-focus leaves); Art (a collection of famous paintings by Monet, Degas, Seurat, and other canvas superheroes); Black & White (breathtaking monochrome shots); Abstract (swishes and swirls with wild colors); Patterns (fabric closeups); and Solid Colors (simple grays, blues, and greens).
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You can choose any solid color—not just one of the preselected shades Apple gives you. Click Custom Color and go nuts.
Of course, you may feel that decorating your Mac desktop is much more fun if you use one of your own pictures. You can use almost any graphics file: JPEG, GIF, TIFF, Photoshop, and even PDF. (Guess you could use the PDF option to help teach yourself your camera’s user guide by staring at your desktop every morning.)
That’s why icons for your own Pictures folder and Photos and Aperture albums also appear here, along with a + button that lets you choose any folder of pictures. When you click one of these icons, you see thumbnail versions of its contents in the main screen to its right. Just click the thumbnail of any picture to apply it immediately to the desktop. (There’s no need to remove the previously installed picture first.)
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If there’s a certain picture you like, but it’s not in any of the listed sources, you can drag its image file onto the well (the miniature desktop displayed in the Desktop panel). A thumbnail instantly appears in the well, and a moment later the picture is plastered across your monitor.
Figure 10-12. Using the list of picture sources at left, you can preview an entire folder of your own images before installing one as your new desktop picture. Use the + button to select a folder of assorted graphics—or, if you’re a Photos veteran, click a Photos album name, as shown here. Clicking one of the thumbnails installs the corresponding picture on the desktop.
No matter which source you use to choose a photo of your own, you have one more issue to deal with. Unless you’ve gone to the trouble of editing your chosen photo so that it matches the precise dimensions of your screen (1920 × 1080 pixels, for example), it probably isn’t exactly the right size.
Fortunately, macOS offers a number of solutions to this problem. Using the pop-up menu just to the right of the desktop preview well, you can choose any of these options:
Fill Screen. Enlarges or reduces the image so that it fills every inch of the desktop. Parts may get chopped off, but this option never distorts the picture.
Fit to Screen. Your photo appears as large as possible without distortion or cropping. If the photo doesn’t precisely match the proportions of your screen, then you get “letterbox bars” on the sides or at top and bottom. Apple provides a color-swatch button next to the pop-up menu shown in Figure 10-12. When you click it, the Color Picker appears so you can specify a color for those letterbox bars.
Stretch to Fill Screen. Makes your picture fit the screen exactly, come hell or high water. Larger pictures may be squished vertically or horizontally as necessary, and small pictures are drastically blown up and squished, usually with grisly results.
Center. Centers the photo neatly on the screen. The edges of the picture may be chopped off. If the picture is smaller than the screen, then it sits smack in the center of the monitor at actual size, leaving a swath of empty border all the way around. (Use the swatch button just to the right of the pop-up menu to specify a color for that border.)
Tile. This option makes your picture repeat over and over until the multiple images fill the entire monitor. (If your picture is larger than the screen, then no such tiling takes place. You see only the top-center chunk of the image.)
The novelty of any desktop picture, no matter how interesting, is likely to fade after several months of all-day viewing. That’s why the randomizing function is so delightful.
Turn on “Change picture” at the bottom of the dialog box (Figure 10-12, bottom). From the pop-up menu, specify when you want your background picture to change: “every day,” “every 15 minutes,” or, if you’re really having trouble staying awake at your Mac, “every 5 seconds.” (The option called “when waking from sleep” refers to the Mac waking from sleep, not you.)
Finally, turn on “Random order,” if you like. If you leave it off, then your desktop pictures change in alphabetical order by file name.
Now, at the interval you specified, your desktop picture changes automatically, smoothly cross-fading between the pictures like a slideshow. You may never want to open another window, because you’ll hate to block your view.
On the Screen Saver panel, you can create your own screensaver slideshows—an absolute must if you have an Apple Thunderbolt Display and a cool Manhattan loft apartment.
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Of course, a screensaver doesn’t really save your screen. Flat-panel screens, the only kind Apple sells, are incapable of “burning in” a stationary image of the sort that originally inspired the creation of screensavers years ago.
No, these screensavers serve two unrelated functions. First, they mask what’s on your screen from passersby whenever you leave your desk. Second, they’re kind of fun.
When you click a module’s name in the Screen Saver list, you see a mini version of it playing back in the preview screen. Click the preview to give the module a dry run on your full screen. When you’ve had enough of the preview, just move the mouse or press any key.
The Screen Saver module offers two categories of screensavers.
At the top of the scrolling list of icons at left, Apple has installed 14 “slideshows”—attractive animations that gracefully fling photos around in different show-offy ways—that began life in programs like Photos.
At right, use the Source pop-up menu to specify which photos you want included in the slideshow. You can use any of the photo sets that Apple provides (National Geographic, Aerial, Cosmos, Nature Patterns); you can choose Choose Folder to specify some photos of your own from a folder on your Mac; or you can choose Photo Library to see a list of your Photos or Aperture albums. Each creates an amazingly dramatic, almost cinematic experience, worthy of setting up to “play” during dinner parties like the lava lamps of the ’70s.
“Shuffle slide order,” of course, scrambles the photo sequence so that it’s different every time. Wouldn’t want you to get bored staring at your screen, now.
Beneath the list of slideshows, you’ll find the icons for seven more traditional, nonphotographic slideshow displays. Each has options worth exploring. For example:
Flurry. Flaming, colorful, undulating arms of fire, which resemble a cross between an octopus and somebody arc welding in the dark. If you click Screen Saver Options, you can control how many streams of fire appear at once, the thickness of the arms, the speed of movement, and the colors.
Arabesque. Patterns of small circles that come and go, shrink and grow; drugged-out randomness.
Shell. Five swirling fireworksy spinners, centered around a bigger one.
Message. The Apple logo and the computer’s name, faintly displayed on the monitor. (These elements shift position every few minutes.) Lets corporate supervisors glance over at the screens of unattended Macs to find out which employees aren’t at their desks.
iTunes Artwork. This module builds a gigantic mosaic of album art from your music collection. The tiles periodically flip around, just to keep the image changing. (The Options button lets you specify how many rows of album-art squares appear, and how often the tiles flip.)
Word of the Day. A parade of interesting words drawn from the Dictionary program. You’re invited to tap the D key to open the dictionary to that entry to read more. Build your word power!
Random. The Mac chooses a different screensaver each time. Surrender to the power of chance!
No matter which screensaver mode you choose, you can also turn on “Show with clock.” This option superimposes the current time on whatever screensaver you’ve selected. You’d be surprised at how handy it can be to use your Mac as a giant digital clock when you’re getting coffee across the room.
You can control when your screensaver takes over your monitor in a couple of ways:
After a period of inactivity. Using the “Start after” pop-up menu, you can set the amount of time that has to pass without keyboard or mouse activity before the screensaver starts. The duration can be as short as 1 minute or as long as 1 hour, or you can choose Never to prevent the screensaver from ever turning on by itself.
When you park your cursor in the corner of the screen. If you click the Hot Corners button, you can turn each corner of your monitor into a hot corner (Figure 10-13).
If you work in a business, or in a nosy family, it might be worth noting here that you can set things up so that your password is required to exit the screensaver. Visit System Preferences→Security & Privacy, and turn on “Require password immediately after sleep or screensaver begins.”
