Using Your Screen Saver as a Desktop Wallpaper in Mac OS X

If you're looking to change up your desktop without having to find new pictures, there are actually two ways to set your screen saver as your desktop wallpaper in Mac OS X. One way is by using Terminal, which may appeal to users who prefer not to run third-party programs in the background.

To use this method, open a new Finder window and navigate to the "Macintosh HD" folder, then select the "Applications" directory, and finally find the Terminal application. Once you've found Terminal, type `CD /Applications/Utilities` and press Enter to change the directory to where your screen savers are located. Next, paste the following line of code into the terminal: `osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to set the desktop picture to (path to folder "/Users/your_username/Pictures/Screen Savers")'`. This will activate the screen saver that's currently set in System Preferences.

If you notice a drop in frames or performance, it's because using Terminal can be CPU-intensive, especially if you have multiple monitors and applications running. To stop this effect, simply press Control+C to exit the terminal. However, this method does come with one major drawback: you'll need to have Terminal open somewhere for it to work.

For a more user-friendly alternative, consider using an application called Wallsaver, which can be downloaded from the official website at [www.wallsaver.app](http://www.wallsaver.app). Wallsaver offers many of the same features as using Terminal, but with a much more intuitive interface. To use Wallsaver, simply download and install the application, then follow the on-screen instructions to set your screen saver.

One notable advantage of using Wallsaver is that you can easily switch between different screen savers without having to exit the application or restart your computer. Simply select the new screen saver from the list, click "Restore" to apply the changes, and then activate the screen saver by clicking on it. This makes Wallsaver a great choice for anyone looking to customize their desktop without too much fuss.

Wallsaver also offers an added layer of convenience in that you can close the application window without affecting the performance of your computer. While Terminal will continue to run in the background, causing performance issues if not properly managed, Wallsaver seamlessly integrates with your operating system, allowing you to work or browse the internet while still maintaining a beautiful and engaging desktop.

In conclusion, there are two ways to set your screen saver as your desktop wallpaper in Mac OS X: using Terminal or an application like Wallsaver. Both methods offer unique advantages and disadvantages, so it's worth considering which one best fits your needs before making a decision.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey everyone today I'm going to show you how you can use your screen saver as a desktop wallpaper so normally you have your you know choice of however many desktops and while it's fine for a while and you can always find new pictures once while you might want to change it up get a little more uh Fancy with your desktop so what you can do is you can actually set your desktop background as a screen saver now there's two ways you can do this and I'm going to show you both of them today the first way is using terminal so if you don't like running third party programs in the background or whatever you can use terminal it's a little more difficult cuz you have to run lines of code every time you want to do it and when you close terminal the background changes back to your regular wallpaper but it also works so I'm going to show you that first just in case you'd want to do it that way I'm going to open up a new finder window and I'm going to go to Macintosh HD applications utilities and then of course terminal once I can find it here now there's two rather lengthy lines of code that you're going to have to paste in the terminal so I'm going to have them below the video If you want to get them and I'm just going to paste them in here but you'll have to type CD space and then I'm going to copy and paste this first line of code all this does is set it to the directory with your screen savers in them and now that you're in the directory there's a second line of code that you paste that activates the screen saver and the screen saver that's active is the one that you have currently set in in system preferences so I paste this and you can see once I hit enter that my background turns into my screen saver now if you notice a drop in frames a little bit of leg it is kind of CPU intensive especially depending on what kind of screen saver you have set up and plus I do have three monitors that are all pushing this as well and I have several different applications running on top so it probably will slow down your system a little bit now to stop this all I have to do is hit contrl C and it's done and that's kind of the issue with this you always have to have terminal you know open somewhere even if you minimize it and if you hit control C it's done if you quit terminal it's over as well so I figured there had to be a better way to go about this so I found this neat application called wallsaver you can get it from wallsaver app.com and you can just hit download here it's a small file and it does pretty much the same thing as terminal but it's a lot easier because you don't have to worry about uh copying and pasting code so here I've got walls saver open and all I have to do is hit activate and it'll do the same thing as terminal but now you can see it's not using the same screen savers I had before that's cuz if you go into preferences you can actually choose the screen saver you want so let's say I want Spectrum instead I can select that then I can hit restore and then activate again and it'll activate it with the new screen saver in mind so this could actually be pretty useful if you had like an RSS type of thing going on and you wanted to see your RSS feeds as they come in and now the nice thing about walls saver is I can close the window and it appears that the program is not running uh but yet it still runs and that's an advantage it has over using terminal so whatever method you want to do is fine if you just want to do something temporary it might be easier just to use terminal once but either way there's two methods you can do and there's actually other third party programs out there that do the same thing as this does I just found that this one worked pretty nice so I chose that one so there's how you can set your desktop wallpaper as a screen saver in Mac OS 10 if you have anything that you'd like to see me do howto on make sure to send me an email I hope you found this video useful thank you for watchinghey everyone today I'm going to show you how you can use your screen saver as a desktop wallpaper so normally you have your you know choice of however many desktops and while it's fine for a while and you can always find new pictures once while you might want to change it up get a little more uh Fancy with your desktop so what you can do is you can actually set your desktop background as a screen saver now there's two ways you can do this and I'm going to show you both of them today the first way is using terminal so if you don't like running third party programs in the background or whatever you can use terminal it's a little more difficult cuz you have to run lines of code every time you want to do it and when you close terminal the background changes back to your regular wallpaper but it also works so I'm going to show you that first just in case you'd want to do it that way I'm going to open up a new finder window and I'm going to go to Macintosh HD applications utilities and then of course terminal once I can find it here now there's two rather lengthy lines of code that you're going to have to paste in the terminal so I'm going to have them below the video If you want to get them and I'm just going to paste them in here but you'll have to type CD space and then I'm going to copy and paste this first line of code all this does is set it to the directory with your screen savers in them and now that you're in the directory there's a second line of code that you paste that activates the screen saver and the screen saver that's active is the one that you have currently set in in system preferences so I paste this and you can see once I hit enter that my background turns into my screen saver now if you notice a drop in frames a little bit of leg it is kind of CPU intensive especially depending on what kind of screen saver you have set up and plus I do have three monitors that are all pushing this as well and I have several different applications running on top so it probably will slow down your system a little bit now to stop this all I have to do is hit contrl C and it's done and that's kind of the issue with this you always have to have terminal you know open somewhere even if you minimize it and if you hit control C it's done if you quit terminal it's over as well so I figured there had to be a better way to go about this so I found this neat application called wallsaver you can get it from wallsaver app.com and you can just hit download here it's a small file and it does pretty much the same thing as terminal but it's a lot easier because you don't have to worry about uh copying and pasting code so here I've got walls saver open and all I have to do is hit activate and it'll do the same thing as terminal but now you can see it's not using the same screen savers I had before that's cuz if you go into preferences you can actually choose the screen saver you want so let's say I want Spectrum instead I can select that then I can hit restore and then activate again and it'll activate it with the new screen saver in mind so this could actually be pretty useful if you had like an RSS type of thing going on and you wanted to see your RSS feeds as they come in and now the nice thing about walls saver is I can close the window and it appears that the program is not running uh but yet it still runs and that's an advantage it has over using terminal so whatever method you want to do is fine if you just want to do something temporary it might be easier just to use terminal once but either way there's two methods you can do and there's actually other third party programs out there that do the same thing as this does I just found that this one worked pretty nice so I chose that one so there's how you can set your desktop wallpaper as a screen saver in Mac OS 10 if you have anything that you'd like to see me do howto on make sure to send me an email I hope you found this video useful thank you for watching\n"