Learn how to set a photo, album, folder, or your entire photo library as your Mac’s screen saver to keep your favorite images cycling through the screen periodically.
I’ve thousands and thousands of photos on my Mac that I rarely get to look at. Every once in a while, I will go into the Mac’s Photos app to back up my iPhone photos locally and start looking through past images, but that’s a rare occurrence.
I’ve realized that one way to put these thousands of images to good use is to actually use them as my screen saver. I’m aware that most iDB readers know how to do that, but I thought I’d still share this tip so you get to enjoy your photos in a very passive way.
On macOS Tahoe or later
The steps to use pictures in the Photos app or Finder folder as the screen saver are slightly different on a Mac running macOS 26 or later.
1) Open System Settings on your Apple computer and click Wallpaper. Then, select Screen Saver from the top.
2) Scroll down to the ‘Other’ section at the bottom and select Photos.
3) Now, look at the top portion of this System Settings window and adjust the following.
Start Screen Saver: Set it to a suitable time other than Never. I usually keep it to “After 5 minutes.” Just make sure the time you pick is less than your Mac’s automatic display-off time. You can choose when your Mac’s display turns off automatically by going to System Settings > Lock Screen > Turn display off when inactive.
Use Screen Saver: Leave it as “Custom.”
Photos: Click the “Options” button and select one of the following as the image source:
- Choose Folder: Select a folder of images from Finder as the screen saver.
- Photo Library: If you select Photos from the top and then click Choose, it will use your entire photo library as the screen saver. Alternatively, you can select one image or hold the Command key to select multiple images, and then click the Choose button to use only those image(s) as the screen saver.
After making your selection, you can check the box for “Shuffle slide order” to shuffle all selected images, rather than playing them in a fixed order.
Style: Choose from one of the styles, such as Floating, Flip-up, Reflections, Origami, Shifting Tiles, Sliding Panels, Photo Mobile, Holiday Mobile, Photo Wall, Vintage Prints, Ken Burns, or Classic. You can check how all these styles look by taking the pointer over the thumbnail above and clicking the Preview button.
4) Once you’ve decided on a style, click the Done button to save your new photo screen saver.
To see your screen saver, leave your Mac idle for the number of minutes you set in Step 3 above. Alternatively, you can assign one of the Hot Corners to Start Screen Saver and activate it whenever you want by dragging the mouse pointer to that corner of your computer screen.
On previous versions of macOS
The fundamentals are the same, but with slight differences in the steps.
1) Open System Settings on your Mac and select Screen Saver.
2) Choose one of the top twelve screen saver styles, like Floating, Flip-up, Reflections, Shifting Tiles, Photo Wall, Ken Burns, Classic, etc.
3) Then, click the Options button at the top.
4) Now, click the drop-down menu next to Source and select Photo Library.
5) You can click the tiny arrows next to People, Albums, or Shared and pick an individual person or album. You can also choose to display only your favorite images as the screen saver. But I like to go with my entire library, which includes all photo albums, and to do that, I select Photos from the top and hit Choose.
6) You can show the images in order or shuffle randomly through them by checking the box for Shuffle slide order. And finally, click OK.
Note: On even older versions of macOS, go to System Preferences > Desktop & Screen Saver > Screen Saver tab > Source > Photo Library and select Photos.
From now on, when the screen saver starts, it will show the pictures from your macOS Photos app. To decide when the screen saver automatically starts, go to System Settings > Lock Screen and select a time for “Start Screen Saver when inactive.”
My screen saver is set to start after 5 minutes of inactivity. I must admit that on more than one occasion, I just sat at my desk looking at the pictures going through my screen saver. As I said, it’s a very passive way to look at some old and recent pictures.
On a related note: