I find the slideshow speed too fast and would prefer a 15-30 second duration. I know the relevant plist is at /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Slideshows.framework/Versions/A/Resources/Content/EffectDescriptions.plist and I believe the entry that needs changing is mainDuration in the JustASlide key. I tried recursively copying /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Slideshows.framework/ to /Library/PrivateFrameworks/Slideshows.framework/ and then changing the destination plist, on the hunch that user library settings would override System library settings. This had no noticeable effect. I've found the below Q&As helpful in researching the issue, but I do not want to disable SIP and authenticated root and therefore be unable to re-enable FileVault. https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/135766/os-x-mavericks-screensaver-changes-pictures-too-quickly-how-do-i-slow-it-down https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/378905/how-do-i-change-the-image-display-duration-in-the-catalina-screensavers https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/395508/can-i-mount-the-root-system-filesystem-as-writable-in-big-sur

Is there a Mac screensaver program that can capture someone's face who unlock my computer (even with the correct screen unlock password)? When the person try to unlock my Mac, it can capture the face and send to me automatically. I saw this kind of program on Windows, but I can't find it on Mac.

I am trying to change the delay between switching of photos for the default macOS **Photos** screensaver. But in the settings window, I can see only the option to choose the source folder, and not adjust the delay. If I am not wrong, there used to be such an option some time ago. Is there a way to change that nowadays? If not, maybe you know the proper external screensaver application with such functionality?

I've looked around but can't seem to find any good answers. Would appreciate any pointers.

I noticed something called "legacyScreenSaver" takes 67GB on disk and feel it’s too much for me. I looked deeper, and I found that it's actually for the screen saver I do use, Aerial. It's in /Users/[user]/Containers/legacyScreenSaver/Data/Library/Application Support/Aerial/, and 59GB of that 67GB is in a cache I'm using a different screensaver. OK to delete legacyScreenSaver?

This page implies that right clicking should work but I don't see to find a way to get rid of this from UI. Where is the file located so that I can trash is from cmdline or by other means Both this:

/Library/Screen\ Savers

And this:

~/Library/Screen\ Savers

Are empty.

Ever since getting this M3 Max 16-inch MacBook Pro last December (2023), I have taken advantage of the generous space of the SSD to download all Aerial screensavers and set them up to rotate alongside the desktop wallpaper every 12 hours. Since yesterday, I have noticed that while the screensavers are still generally smooth, the "camera" movement seems to stutter every few seconds or so. The movement begins smoothly and then makes a small jump, both on the internal display and on the external one I use (MateView 28"). Not knowing how to technically express this, I could describe it as if the framerate of the display dropped for a while, though I doubt that is the case. This is more noticeable when looking at the edges of the screen, but it is there in any case. Another, possibly related thing, is that when I drag the compose-Mail window around, the text becomes noticeably blurry until the drag operation is over. This is not so evident in other apps. Any idea of what this could be?

After updating to Sonoma, I turned on the new video screensaver. Now I would like to turn it off because I don't like it, but I can't seem to make it go away. I changed the Lock Screen settings to "Never" turn on the screensaver, but it still appears. My main question is simply how to make the video screensaver go away, or only show a static image. One reason I want to turn it off is that it seems to use considerable memory and degrade performance of various background processes. I did not notice this degradation when the Lock Screen was on before upgrading to Sonoma. If you think the performance degradation is not caused by the screensaver, please give suggestions on how to preserve performance when the Lock Screen is on in Sonoma. EDIT: What I am seeing might not be the screensaver, but a video autoplays on the lock screen. It also seems to be there when I return after the display has been turned off. I changed the wallpaper to a static image (not the screensaver). I will see if that improves the memory and perf issues.

Since a couple of days I have been noticing that the screensaver was not kicking in at the specified interval (2 minutes). I diplomatically assume it is not an Apple app, and currently I have Timemator, Sibelius, InDesign, Illustrator, Acrobat DC running as 3rd-party apps on top of macOS Sonoma 14.5 — M3 Max MacBook Pro. An excellent post here discusses how to troubleshoot a Mac that won’t sleep. I’m looking to do the same on what prevents the Mac from being seen as idle and activating the screensaver before sleep happens. Here is the result of the pm -g assertion thing in Terminal:

Assertion status system-wide:
   BackgroundTask                 0
   ApplePushServiceTask           0
   UserIsActive                   1
   PreventUserIdleDisplaySleep    1
   PreventSystemSleep             0
   ExternalMedia                  0
   PreventUserIdleSystemSleep     1
   NetworkClientActive            0
Listed by owning process:
   pid 312(powerd): [0x00064dd800019f62] 00:47:39 PreventUserIdleSystemSleep named: "Powerd - Prevent sleep while display is on"  
   pid 77745(CEPHtmlEngine): [0x00063f4800059bf6] 02:19:20 NoDisplaySleepAssertion named: "Video Wake Lock"  
   pid 366(WindowServer): [0x000657d70009a4a5] 00:00:00 UserIsActive named: "com.apple.iohideventsystem.queue.tickle serviceID:1003119f0 service:AppleHIDKeyboardEventDriverV2 product:Magic Keyboard with Numeric Keypad eventType:3"  
	Timeout will fire in 300 secs Action=TimeoutActionRelease
   pid 359(bluetoothd): [0x000658ca0001a507] 00:00:57 PreventUserIdleSystemSleep named: "com.apple.BTStack"  
   pid 397(coreaudiod): [0x00064dd8000181a9] 00:47:39 PreventUserIdleSystemSleep named: "com.apple.audio.AVVCAggregateDevice-63958-16807.context.preventuseridlesleep"  
	Created for PID: 63958. 
	Resources: audio-in audio-out BuiltInSpeakerDevice 
   pid 397(coreaudiod): [0x00064dd800019b02] 00:47:39 PreventUserIdleSystemSleep named: "com.apple.audio.BuiltInSpeakerDevice.context.preventuseridlesleep"  
	Created for PID: 77190. 
	Resources: audio-out BuiltInSpeakerDevice 
   pid 63922(sharingd): [0x000657d70001a4a7] 00:05:01 PreventUserIdleSystemSleep named: "Handoff"  
Kernel Assertions: 0x8=BT-HID
   id=1494  level=255 0x8=BT-HID creat=23.07.2024, 07:20 description=com.apple.driver.IOBluetoothHIDDriver owner=AppleHSBluetoothDevice
   id=1495  level=255 0x8=BT-HID creat=23.07.2024, 07:27 description=com.apple.driver.IOBluetoothHIDDriver owner=AppleHSBluetoothDevice

I believe Sibelius is preventing sleep, but it has never prevented the screensaver from starting in the past. I thought the screensaver blocker was Adobe Illustrator but today, Monday morning, freshly boot up Mac after more than 24h off, it happened again, and Illustrator was not running, but Sibelius was. I have found that the ScreenTime widget on the Desktop sometimes returns odd data which doesn't correspond to the reality of things. Clicking on it to open System Settings, and then Activity Monitor to make things sync seem to help, though I am not 100% this is the solution. Once more, this has nothing to do with my Mac not going to sleep, but I need to understand how to allow my screen saver to engage when I am not using it for 2 minutes. Is there a way short of shutting down each app and waiting for the screensaver to start to narrow down what’s happening here?

I've looked around a lot for a way to use one of the screensavers as the wallpaper for my desktop. I found a few options but all of them didn't seem to work on macOS Catalina. The way I tried to attempt this was by using the following code.

/System/Library/CoreServices/ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaverEngine -background &

All this does is launch the screensaver, instead of making it my wallpaper. Any way that this could be done on Catalina?

Can't believe that I have to ask this question, but... How to I disable the screen saver on my 2014 MacBook Pro, running MacOS Sierra 10.12? I have a need occasionally to keep the screen display on, but I might not use it for 20 minutes at a time. I want to disable the screen saver, but the button to adjust the time (I presume it has a 'None' option) is disabled. How can I enable that dropdown, in order to change the 'Start after' time? Or is there somewhere else I should change it? I know that I can use hot corners to disable screen saver, but that's too hacky - if I forget to put the cursor in the corner, it doesn't do it, and I only know when the screen saver comes on - which is frustrating.

MBP M1, Sonoma 14.4.1, screen does not automatically lock after 5 minutes (and screensaver does not start, either), despite being set to kick in after 5 minutes. Problem 'resolves' with reboot, but comes up again by itself. I have no 3rd party apps that are meant to keep the screen up and awake. pmset -g assertions 2024-05-11 11:06:30 +0300 Assertion status system-wide: BackgroundTask 0 ApplePushServiceTask 0 UserIsActive 1 PreventUserIdleDisplaySleep 1 PreventSystemSleep 0 ExternalMedia 0 InternalPreventDisplaySleep 1 PreventUserIdleSystemSleep 1 NetworkClientActive 0 Listed by owning process: pid 448(WindowServer): [0x000554a9000987ca] 00:00:00 UserIsActive named: "com.apple.iohideventsystem.queue.tickle serviceID:100000b42 service:AppleHIDKeyboardEventDriverV2 product:Apple Internal Keyboard / Trackpad eventType:3" Timeout will fire in 600 secs Action=TimeoutActionRelease pid 394(powerd): [0x00053b24000185be] 01:54:30 PreventUserIdleSystemSleep named: "Powerd - Prevent sleep while display is on" pid 394(powerd): [0x000554ab00108330] 00:00:24 InternalPreventDisplaySleep named: "com.apple.powermanagement.delayDisplayOff" Timeout will fire in 276 secs Action=TimeoutActionTurnOff pid 453(runningboardd): [0x00054e420001878d] 00:32:56 PreventUserIdleSystemSleep named: "app453-2277-18925:Shared Background Assertion 3965 for net.whatsapp.WhatsApp(FinishTask)" Created for PID: 2277. pid 2277(WhatsApp): [0x00006e92000596f4] 157:18:59 PreventUserIdleDisplaySleep named: "net.whatsapp.idletimer" No kernel assertions.

When then screensaver is activated, pressing a button on the keyboard does not stop the show and display the lockscreen. The system bell chimes, but the screensaver show continues. If I press a button on the mouse, the screensavers stops and the lockscreen shows. It's been a while, but I remember being able to stop the screensaver by pressing any key on the keyboard. Is there some way to re-enable this functionality? Edit: I'm running 10.13.6 (17G65) High Sierra.

I am using a MacBook (M1 MBP Sonoma 14.1.2) with an external display (BenQ P3). The screen acts as a hub and powers my audio interface and external hard drives. Currently my Mac will go to a screensaver after a while. This is because sleep mode will make my monitor cut the power to the interface and hard drives. However, having the screen on when I'm simply listening to music feels like a waste of electricity; so here is the question: **How can I make the screen sleep or at least dim, without cutting power to my peripherals?**

This has been plaguing me. I have my Macbook Pro (Sonoma) plugged into two external monitors. When I lock or sleep my computer, it goes to the Lock Screen with all monitors on. Sometimes, the screens will go black for a few seconds, but they immediately turn back on. Is there a key command, or a Setting, or something, that will allow me to press a button to both lock my computer and turn the screens off? I'm lighting up this room for nothing.

I like to display my own images using the Mac OS X screensaver, but it seems that Mountain Lion has shortened the duration for which each image is displayed. The duration is too short for my tastes – that is, the screensaver changes images too quickly. I searched online but could not find an explanation of how to change the refresh rate; I also looked inside the likely preferences files (~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.screensaver.plist and ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.preference.desktopscreeneffect.plist) and none of the properties there appear relevant. *Is* there a way to change the rate at which images are shown?

The new macOS Sonoma has aerial screen savers—similar to Apple TV—and one of the options is to shuffle through all of them. On Apple TV, you can tap the up arrow 2x to peek at the location of the current screen saver. Is there a similar way to peek the location of a screen saver on macOS Sonoma?

My system drive is tiny and my second is 2TB. Therefore I would like to store the Sonoma Aerial videos on the second drive. If I use shuffle, there's approximately 57gb of them. I presumed that macos would treat a symlinked directory like a regular directory but I'm having trouble with the following: - I move the **4KSDR240FPS** directory (with all videos downloaded) to the second drive. - I create a symlink of the **4KSDR240FPS** directory via: ln -s ... (and confirm it works etc). The problem is that the screensaver system preferences act as if there's no videos in the directory. If I empty the directory and attempt to re-download any of the videos via system preferences, it completes the download symbol but nothing happens. There's no video in the directory and a revisit to system preferences suggests it needs to be downloaded again. - I've tried giving both root and user (who is an admin) permissions to the symlink but it hasn't changed anything. - I've also tried deleting the rest of the files in the com.apple.idleassetsd directory (that parents the **4KSDR240FPS** directory) and let macos rebuild them when I open the system preferences (which it does). But the problem persists. Any ideas on hosting the videos outside of the system disk (other than using third party screen savers that I'm aware of)? _note: I'm using the name 'Aerial' as I've seen the Sonoma system video screensavers referenced as this. I'm aware that there's also a third-party app, of this name, using similar videos for a similar screen saver and I'm not referring to that._ ## Update 1 I deleted the **4KSDR240FPS** symlink and let Aerial recreate the directory by choosing a video from the prefs. It does appear to download it outside of this directory and only moves it into it when the download is complete. If using a symlink, this final move does not happen for me. ## Update 2 I attemped to use the synthetic.conf solution linked to in the answer @chronospoon gave. The following command in terminal: echo -e "Library/Application Support/com.apple.idleassetsd/Customer/4KSDR240FPS\tVolumes/Twotb/Library Annexe/Application Support/com.apple.idleassetsd/Customer/4KSDR240FPS" | sudo tee /etc/synthetic.conf Did create a synthetic.conf file withe above command. I checked it had a tab character and did not have leading slashes. I also made sure the target **4KSDR240FPS** existed (by creating a new, empty dir). Restarting the mac produced no Library/Application Support/com.apple.idleassetsd/Customer/4KSDR240FPS symlink of any kind

I've tried a variety of different ways to change the message for the "message" screen saver on macOS 10.10.3. When I change it through the GUI, at least the following plist file is updated: ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Basic.UUID.plist When I try to update this file as root using: defaults write /Users/myusername/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Basic.UUID.plist MESSAGE "test" or defaults write ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Basic.UUID.plist after closing the prefs window, when I subsequently re-open the sys prefs and view the screen saver settings, they still show the old settings. The following command to restart the prefs engine doesn't work either: killall cfprefsd If I modify the above files using defaults without opening the system prefs, then restart, strangely, the screensaver reverts to the default computer name after the restart. Ultimately I'm trying to enforce a custom screensaver with floating text on all my macOS machines.

I have changed the screensaver on my MacBook Pro Ventura. However, it's not taking effect, even when I click on preview button it doesn't show the preview of selected screensaver. it shows preview of Ventura screen save only and that's all see as scree saver. This is office laptop so not sure if there is a permission issue. from command line also it shows that screen saver has been set.

defaults -currentHost read com.apple.screensaver
{
    CleanExit = 1;
    PrefsVersion = 100;
    idleTime = 300;
    moduleDict =     {
        moduleName = Fliqlo;
        path = "/Users/fki/Library/Screen Savers/Fliqlo.saver";
        type = 0;
    };
    showClock = 0;
    tokenRemovalAction = 0;
}

This is what I found on my profiles managed by device.