It’s quite easy to set up a screen saver on your Mac. It will help you hide your desktop behind high-quality videos offered by Apple, show an animated slideshow of your photos, music album covers, or beautiful animations from text.
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What can you use as a screensaver on Mac?
macOS comes with a built-in screen saver feature, which may vary depending on the version of macOS. You can set the following options as your screen saver:
- official animated title splash screens of various versions of macOS;
- high-quality video aerial screensavers with various beautiful places on Earth in the categories: nature, cities, underwater, planet Earth (available in macOS Sonoma and newer versions of macOS);
- images from your Mac’s photo library or Finder folder;
- animated screensaver with the word “hello”;
- Screensavers named Flurry, Sink, Drift and Arabesque;
- custom note or text;
- album cover from the Music app;
- word of the day
In addition, using additional applications, you can install third-party screensavers with weather, clocks, etc.
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How to choose and install a screensaver on Mac?
1. Open the application “System Settings” and go to the section “Screensaver“
2. Select a category and one of the many thumbnail options available. Some screen savers have a “Choose…“, which allows you to further customize by choosing colors or your own photos as the screen saver, or make other changes. For example, if you selected the screensaver “Message“, press the button “Choose…” to enter the desired text.
3. Click the buttonView” that will appear when you hover over the selected thumbnail to see what the screen saver will look like.
Note. Some video screensavers require some download time to install. The download progress will be indicated by an indicator in the upper right corner.
4. And if you can’t decide which splash screen you want to display, go to the “Shuffle air savers”, and in it select one of the options: “Shuffle All”, “Nature Category”, “Cities Category”, “Underwater Category” or “Planet Earth Category”. Once selected, your Mac will use and shuffle all screensavers according to the selected category.
5. In order for the selected screensaver to also be displayed as an animated screensaver on the macOS Lock Screen, as well as as wallpaper, select the switch “Show as wallpaper” to position “Included“
6. To ensure that the selected screensaver is displayed in all spaces (macOS desktops), select the switch “Show in all spaces” to position “Included“
When you’re done selecting and customizing your screensavers, simply close this window.
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How to configure screensaver (screen saver) settings on Mac?
You can configure several other settings for screensavers, such as when the screen saver should start, when your Mac should turn off the display, and much more. For this:
1. Open the application “System Settings” and go to the section “Lock screen“
2. Opposite the item “Turn on the screensaver when there is no activity» select the desired time. If, for example, you select 3 minutes, then this means that your Mac will automatically start showing the screensaver on its monitor if no one is working on the computer in the last 3 minutes.
3. Then set the time for “Turn off display when inactive” If, for example, you select 30 minutes, this means that your Mac’s screen will automatically turn off and stop displaying the screensaver if the computer has been idle/inactive for the last 30 minutes.
Note. If the screensaver starts after 3 minutes (step 2) and your Mac is set to turn off the display after 30 minutes of inactivity (step 3), that means the screensaver will be displayed for 30 – 3 = 27 minutes.
4. If you want the time to be displayed along with the screensaver, set the option to “On the screen saver and lock screen” opposite the item “Show large clock“
5. Finally, to ensure security, select the required option next to “Request a password when the screen saver appears or the display turns off“
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How to launch screensaver on Mac?
1. Automatically, after some time.
As we said, your Mac will automatically start showing the screensaver if it has remained inactive for the amount of time you selected in step 2 in the previous section.
2.Usage Active corners.
You can set up Hot Corners on your Mac to launch your screensaver whenever you want. As a result, when you place your mouse pointer at the desired corner of the screen, it will instantly switch to screensaver mode.
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How to stop showing the screen saver on Mac?
There are two ways to do this.
1. Manually. Press any key on your Mac keyboard, move your mouse, or tap your trackpad, and the screen saver will stop showing.
2. Automatically. Your Mac will automatically stop showing the screen saver and turn off the display according to the settings you selected earlier in step 3 of customizing your screen saver options.
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How to enable an animated screensaver from your own photos on Mac
The many personal photos stored in Mac memory have an alternative use beyond their honorable function of collecting dust on the hard drive. A slideshow made up of personal, sweet and simply memorable pictures will become a much more interesting screensaver for your macOS desktop than standard solutions drawn by a robot.
1. Open the application “System Settings” and go to the section “Screensaver“
2. At the very bottom in the category “Other” select option “Photo“
3. At the top of the screen opposite the item “Photo» click the « buttonChoose…“, then in the drop-down menu “Source“Specify a folder with photos or select the application’s media library”Photo“
To display photos in random order, check the box next to “Shuffle slides“
4. At the top, select the style you want to display your slideshow.
There are more than a dozen beautiful animation effects to choose from:
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