How to Set a Screensaver as Desktop Background on Mac

For the folks who wish to apply fascinating screen savers as desktop background on Mac may follow the simple instructions written below to do that. Although this Mac tip works temporary until your system is ON and on next session you have to perform the steps again to set screensaver as background. Anyway, still its interesting.

Screensaver background macSet a Screen Saver as Desktop Background on Mac

Step 1

“Right click” on desktop and select “Change Desktop Background…” option

Step 2

Click “Screen Saver” tab and here select any screen saver which you want to set as background and close the window

Step 3

Now open “Finder”


Go to “Applications > Utilities” and launch “Terminal”

Step 4

Copy and paste following command in “Terminal” and hit “Enter”
/System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaverEngine -background

Step 5

Now, minimize “Terminal” and see, the applied screen saver is appearing as desktop background

To revert the change simply close the Terminal window.

3 comments… add one
Polka 95 May 31, 2010, 2:03 pm

nice mac tip

nigegr January 2, 2013, 7:53 pm

How do you get it to stay like that?

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