You can customize your Desktop in OS X Yosemite by setting your favorite photo as the background. The first figure shows a Desktop with a portrait of a dog, Zeke, painted by talented artist Jeanne Illenye.
Desktop Wallpaper For Mac Computer
(The next figure shows the default Desktop background.)
Here’s how you can change your Desktop picture:
10.0 Cheetah & 10.1 Puma. The first two releases of Mac OS X shared the same wallpaper.
From the Desktop, choose Apple→System Preferences.
Or right- or Control-click the Desktop, choose Change Desktop Background from the contextual menu, and skip to Step 3.
The System Preferences window appears.
Click the Desktop & Screen Saver icon.
When the Desktop & Screen Saver pane appears, click the Desktop tab (if it’s not selected already).
Click a folder in the column on the left and then click a picture in the area on the right.
A picture called Elephant is one of the items in the Desktop Pictures folder.
You have at least three other ways to change your Desktop picture:
- Desktop Wallpaper. On this page you can download the most beautiful desktop wallpapers of Pexels. Browse through the desktop background images and download every background picture to your Windows and Mac OS computer for free.
- MacDesktops - An ever-growing collection of high quality images in various resolutions for use as desktop pictures on Apple Macintosh or Windows personal computers. WordPress user purge - 12 Jun 2015 10:54 I just purged a few hundred WordPress users that appear to have been generated by bots.
Drag a picture file from the Finder onto the image well (the little rectangular picture to the left of the picture’s name).
Click the Desktop tab in the Desktop & Screen Saver System Preferences pane and then click the + button at the bottom of the list on the left. Choose a folder in the standard Open File sheet and that folder appears in the list; you can use any picture files it contains for your Desktop picture.
Click the iPhoto (or Aperture) item in the column on the left side of the Desktop & Screen Saver preference pane and choose from pictures stored in iPhoto or Aperture.
Apple sounded the death knell for iPhoto and Aperture in early 2014. A new app called Photos will replace both sometime in 2015.
Every major version of Mac OS X macOS has come with a new default wallpaper. As you can see, I have collected them all here.
While great in their day, the early wallpapers are now quite small in the world of 5K displays.
Major props to the world-class designer who does all the art of Relay FM, the mysterious @forgottentowel, for upscaling some of these for modern screens.
If you want to see detailed screenshots of every release of OS X, click here.
10.0 Cheetah & 10.1 Puma
The first two releases of Mac OS X shared the same wallpaper. The sweeping blue arcs and curves helped set the tone of the new Aqua interface.
10.2 Jaguar
Jaguar took the same Aqua-inspired theme but added some depth and motion to things. In my head, the trails streaking across the screen were from a set of comets.
10.3 Panther
While Panther inflicted Macs everywhere with Brushed Metal, its wallpaper stayed on brand, refreshing the original 10.0 image.
10.4 Tiger
Many consider Tiger to be the best “classic” version of Mac OS X. While that may or may not be true, it has my favorite Aqua-inspired wallpaper.
10.5 Leopard
Complete with a revised, unified user interface and shiny new Dock, 10.5 broke the Aqua mold. As such, Leopard was the first version of OS X to break from the Aqua-themed wallpaper. It ushered in the “space era” of OS X wallpapers, which was used heavily in the new Time Machine interface as well.
10.6 Snow Leopard
The “no new features” mantra for Snow Leopard didn’t ban a new wallpaper, thankfully. This starscape is still one of my favorites.
10.7 Lion
Lion kept up the space theme, this time showing off the Andromeda galaxy. The space nerd in me likes the idea, but the execution of this one leaves dead-last on my list of favorites.
10.8 Mountain Lion
Desktop Picture Size Mac
Just like Snow Leopard before it, with Mountain Lion, Apple opted to clean up and revise the existing theme as opposed to changing directions for what would be a less-impactful release of OS X.
10.9 Mavericks
Mavericks marked the beginning of Apple’s “California location” naming scheme for Mac releases. The wave depicted looks as intimidating as the ones in the famous surfing location.
10.10 Yosemite
Apple Desktop Background Images
Yosemite brought another UI refresh to the Mac, making things flatter and more modern. The wallpaper ushered in a new era based on … well … mountains.
10.11 El Capitan
Named after a breathtaking spot in Yosemite National Park, El Capitan was a clean-up year after 10.10.
Background Pictures For Mac Desktop
10.12 Sierra
More mountains.
10.13 High Sierra
Even more mountains.
10.14 Mojave
No more mountains! Mojave brought a new system-wide Dark Mode, and the OS shipped with two versions of its default wallpaper to match. Users could even have macOS slowly fade between the two background images over the course of the day.
Download 5K versions:
10.15 Catalina
macOS Catalina brought big changes to the Mac, including the ability to run iPad apps natively, opening the platform up to a much larger number of developers than ever before. Catalina shipped with multiple variants of its default wallpaper, and the ability to shift between them as time progresses throughout the day:
Download 6K versions:
Desktop Pictures For Imac
macOS Big Sur
This version of macOS is such a big deal, Apple changed the version number to 11.0. It will be the OS that brings support for Apple Silicon-powered Macs, and features a brand new design.
Desktop Pictures For Mac
Download 6K versions:
Desktop Picture On Mac Won't Change
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