60 fps Live Wallpapers on Mac
Wallpapers move more smoothly than before and cost less to run at the same time. On an M4 Mac mini a playing 4K wallpaper used well under one percent of the machine.
Most performance updates take something away to give something back. This one gives you both.
Wallpapers move more smoothly than they did, and cost your Mac less than they did. That combination is worth a release on its own.
Quick answer: Wallpapers now play at a smoother 60 frames a second and still cost less than the old, choppier version did. Measured on an M4 Mac mini driving a large display, a playing 4K wallpaper used a fraction of one percent of the machine.
What It Actually Costs
We try not to use words like fast without numbers behind them, so here are the numbers.
We later measured a running wallpaper properly, and the version we tested was this one. On an M4 Mac mini driving a large display, a 4K wallpaper used a fraction of one percent of the machine, and we could not detect any extra cost elsewhere.
In practice that means you will not hear the fans, you will not see it in your battery estimate, and nothing else you are doing will slow down for it. The full battery and performance test has the method and the raw measurements, and the performance FAQ has the short answer.
Why Smoother and Cheaper Are Not a Contradiction
Smoother usually costs more, so getting both looks wrong at first glance.
It works because most of what the old version spent was not being spent on the picture. It was going on work around it: redoing things that had not changed, and checking on things nobody had touched. Clearing that out left enough room to make the wallpaper move better and still come out lower than before.
The same thing happened on a smaller scale in 1.6.2, months earlier.
Other Fixes
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A crash when closing the window is gone.
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Tapping a wallpaper in Recommended For You, or any see-all list, opens it the first time instead of only after going back and trying again.
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The built-in Day and Night sets can no longer be deleted out from under the schedule that uses them.
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While a music wallpaper is playing, the buttons in your menu bar change the song, rather than skipping through wallpapers you were not looking at.
If You Publish Wallpapers
Large uploads used to fail once they got past a certain size, with an error that explained nothing. They go straight to where they are stored now, so big batches upload properly. Anyone keeping the gallery growing should notice immediately, and the uploads guide covers the requirements.
Related
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Browse wallpapers: space, nature, minimalist
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