How to change the lock screen wallpaper on a Mac (macOS Sonoma and later)

The Mac lock screen wallpaper, on a MacBook or a desktop Mac, is your desktop wallpaper. Current macOS has no separate lock screen picture: open System Settings, click Wallpaper, and pick an aerial, a dynamic wallpaper, a picture, a color or one of your own photos. The same image then appears behind the clock and login field when you lock the Mac. Aerials add a twist: they play as slow-motion video on the lock screen and freeze into the desktop wallpaper when you unlock.

This guide covers the steps, what each lock screen element is controlled by, the Sonoma wallpapers that introduced the animated look, and why a different picture can appear after a restart.

How to change the lock screen wallpaper on a Mac

You change the Mac lock screen wallpaper in System Settings > Wallpaper, because the lock screen always shows the wallpaper of the signed-in user. Apple's wallpaper guide lists the steps:

1. Open the Apple menu and choose System Settings.
2. Click Wallpaper in the sidebar (you may need to scroll down).
3. Pick a category: Dynamic Wallpapers, Your Photos, the Landscape, Cityscape, Underwater or Earth aerials, Shuffle Aerials, Pictures or Colors.
4. Click a wallpaper. If it shows a download arrow, the Mac downloads it first.
5. Set the options shown at the top of the window, such as the light or dark appearance of a dynamic wallpaper or how often aerials shuffle.
6. Lock the Mac with Apple menu > Lock Screen (or Control-Command-Q) to check the result.

To use your own image, scroll to Your Photos, click Add Photo and choose from Photos, a file or a folder. You can also drag an image onto the preview at the top of Wallpaper settings, Control-click an image file in Finder and choose Set Desktop Picture, or Control-click an image in Safari and choose Use Image as Desktop Wallpaper. A folder or album rotates through its pictures, so the lock screen changes with it.

What controls each part of the Mac lock screen

The Mac lock screen is built from three settings areas, and knowing which one owns an element saves a lot of clicking. The wallpaper comes from Wallpaper settings, the moving video from the screen saver, and the login behavior from Lock Screen settings.

The Lock Screen settings page also holds the idle times for turning the display off on battery and on the power adapter, password hints, and whether the login window shows the Sleep, Restart and Shut Down buttons. In macOS Sonoma itself the large clock toggle sat in Lock Screen settings; newer releases moved it to Clock Appearance in Wallpaper settings.

macOS Sonoma wallpapers and the animated lock screen

macOS Sonoma introduced the aerial wallpapers that move on the lock screen: slow-motion videos of landscapes, cities, underwater scenes and Earth from orbit, similar to the Apple TV aerials. When you unlock the Mac, the motion stops and the last frame stays on the desktop as a still wallpaper, which 9to5Mac described at Sonoma's announcement in June 2023. The same update moved the date and time to the top center of the lock screen, as on iPhone and iPad, and shrank the login area at the bottom.

The aerial categories are still part of Wallpaper settings in current macOS releases. To get the Sonoma look:

• Pick an aerial from Landscape, Cityscape, Underwater or Earth in Wallpaper settings.
• Choose Shuffle Aerials to rotate through all aerials or a single category, and set how often they change.
• Pick a dynamic wallpaper instead if you want a still image that shifts between light and dark appearances.

Aerials are large video files, so each one downloads when you first select it. For comparison, the macOS 13 Ventura lock screen below still showed the clock in the menu bar and a static wallpaper. Everything else that changed in macOS 14 Sonoma is in our overview.

How to use an aerial screen saver on the lock screen

An aerial screen saver is turned on from the Screen Saver option in Wallpaper settings, and by default the aerial you pick as wallpaper also plays as the screen saver. Apple's screen saver guide gives these steps:

1. Open System Settings and click Wallpaper.
2. Click Screen Saver.
3. Choose Custom, then pick a category: macOS, the aerials, Shuffle Aerials or Other (your photos, a message, Word of the Day).
4. Set when the screen saver starts after the Mac goes idle.

The screen saver starts by itself after the idle time unless the display is already off. To start it at once, lock the Mac from the Apple menu or use a hot corner. Press a key, move the mouse or touch the trackpad to stop it. If you would rather not see video at all, choose a still picture or color as wallpaper and a non-aerial screen saver, and the lock screen stays static.

Why the Mac shows a different wallpaper after a restart

A different picture after a restart is normal on a Mac with FileVault turned on. The first screen after startup belongs to a preboot environment that runs before your user account and its wallpaper preferences load, so it can show a default picture, and your own wallpaper only appears once you have signed in. Reports in Cindori's lock screen guide match this behavior on recent releases.

Use this checklist if the lock screen picture looks wrong:

• Test with a normal lock (Control-Command-Q) rather than a restart.
• Reselect the wallpaper in Wallpaper settings.
• Check whether you are looking at the screen saver instead of the wallpaper.
• Try a local JPEG or PNG file instead of a cloud folder.
• Do not turn off FileVault or change system file permissions to fix a cosmetic issue.

On a Mac with several accounts, each user has their own wallpaper, and the lock screen shows the one of the account that is locked.

FAQ

Related: desktop widgets in macOS 14 Sonoma, Stage Manager on the Mac, undo and redo shortcuts on Mac and Windows