How to change your MacBook wallpaper

Apple bundles some very pretty wallpapers with its MacBooks, and they’re not all just simple wallpapers. Almost all of Apple’s default wallpapers scale to the size of any display, be it an ultra-wide 49-inch monitor or a single, double, or triple monitor setup. You also get dynamic wallpapers that change depending on the time of day, animated wallpapers, and more. They’re a lot of fun to play around with, and great for customising your Mac. Let’s take a closer look at how this is done.

Setting a wallpaper from the desktop

Simply right-click or ctrl+click on the desktop to open a right-click menu. Here select ‘Change Wallpaper’ to open the wallpaper panel. At the top of the panel are options for scaling the image in various ways. We’d recommend sticking with the ‘Fill Screen’ option for most wallpapers, and only trying the other options if you’re not happy with how your desktop looks.

ALSO READ: What is Apple Intelligence, Apple’s very own take on AI?

Second, you’ll see a toggle that says ‘Show on all Spaces’. By default, a wallpaper that you set will only be visible as the background in the space you’re currently working in. It will not be visible on other spaces or displays until you toggle this switch.

Below this you’ll see options that say ‘Add Photo’ and ‘Add Folder or Album’. These options allow you to add individual photos or albums from the Photos app or from folders directly. Images added in this fashion will show up in the list below this section and can be applied at any time.

You’ll also see various options here. Dynamic wallpapers, landscapes, cityscapes, and so on. These are all the wallpapers that Apple bundles by default and you can simply click on any of them to apply. The dynamic wallpapers are the most interesting ones as you’ll see the colour and tone change over the day.

ALSO READ: How to change your iPhone wallpaper

At the bottom of this list you’ll see two segments called ‘Colours’ and ‘Favourites’. The colours panel shows solid colours that you can apply as a desktop background, while the favourites panel highlights all your favourited photos.

This same wallpaper panel can be accessed by clicking on the Apple logo in the menu bar, then heading to System Settings and Wallpaper.

Setting a wallpaper from Finder

If there’s an image in a folder that you want to set as a wallpaper, right click on the image in Finder, head to Services, and select ‘Set Desktop Picture’.

You can also perform quick edits on the images such as removing the background by right-clicking on the image and selecting ‘Remove Background’. Double-clicking on the image will open it in Preview, and you could also edit it that way.

Setting a wallpaper from the Photos app

Any photo that’s stored in the Photos app can be set as a wallpaper by selecting the image, hitting Share, and then selecting ‘Set Wallpaper.’ You can of course edit the image in the Photos app before setting it as a wallpaper.

ALSO READ: Apple MacBook Air M2 vs MacBook Air M1: What’s different?

As you can see, changing wallpapers on a Mac is a simple process. Oh, and we’d love to get a look at your desktop setups so please feel free to reach out to us on social media to share your creations!