Mac Wallpaper That Changes With the Time of Day
Get a Mac wallpaper that changes with the time of day: Apple's Dynamic Desktop for stills, or live wallpapers that follow sunrise, sunset and times you set.
A Mac wallpaper that changes with the time of day gives the desktop a sense of the hour: soft light in the morning, something darker at night. macOS has this built in as Dynamic wallpapers, which follow the sun, but they work only with Apple's own pictures and only as stills. For video, or a schedule of your own down to sunrise and sunset, you can build one in Wallper.
Quick answer: for stills, open System Settings › Wallpaper and choose one of the Dynamic Wallpapers. For live wallpapers, create a Day & Night or Dynamic playlist in Wallper, give each part of the day its own wallpaper, and press Play.
How dynamic wallpapers work on a Mac
Apple introduced Dynamic Desktop in macOS Mojave. A dynamic wallpaper holds the same scene in the light of different hours, and macOS shows the one that matches the time of day where you are, so the desktop brightens and darkens as the day goes on.
To set one up, open System Settings, click Wallpaper in the sidebar and choose a picture from Dynamic Wallpapers. The menu next to its name decides how it behaves: Dynamic keeps it changing through the day, and the light and dark still versions fix it to one look. Many of Apple's wallpapers also offer Automatic, which follows Light and Dark mode whatever the time.
What Dynamic Desktop can't do
You choose from Apple's pictures only, since System Settings has no way to build a dynamic wallpaper from your own photos, and every version of the scene is a still image. The timing isn't yours either. The sun decides, so there's no way to ask for a particular scene at 9:00 when work starts, or for a change at lunch.
If one of Apple's pictures suits you, that may be all you need: it costs nothing and there's nothing to install.
Live wallpapers that change with the time of day
Wallper's playlists do the same job with video. You choose a playlist's kind when you create it, and two of the four kinds are about time:
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Day & Night has one wallpaper for the day and another for the night. Day can start at sunrise and Night at sunset, or either one at a time you pick.
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Dynamic has times you add yourself, each with its own wallpaper: dawn, morning, lunch, golden hour, night.
The other two kinds are All Day, which takes turns through the day like a slideshow, and Light & Dark, which follows your Mac's appearance. Any wallpaper in your library can go into a playlist, including videos you've imported yourself.
| Dynamic Desktop (macOS) | Day & Night (Wallper) | Dynamic (Wallper) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wallpapers | Apple's pictures | Any in your library | Any in your library |
| Moving video | No, stills | Yes | Yes |
| When it changes | With the sun where you are | Sunrise and sunset, or times you pick | At each time you add |
| Changes per day | Decided by the picture | Two | One per time you add |
| What you need | Nothing, it's built in | Wallper, macOS 14.6 or later | Wallper, macOS 14.6 or later |
If this is your first schedule, start with Day & Night: two wallpapers, and the sun takes care of the timing. Move to Dynamic when you want more steps through the day.
How to set up a wallpaper that changes through the day
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Download Wallper and open it. It needs macOS 14.6 or later.
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Open the Playlists tab and create a playlist. Choose Day & Night or Dynamic.
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On the playlist page, pick a time (or Day or Night), then click a wallpaper in the library right below to assign it. Every wallpaper's ⋯ menu, and its right-click menu, also has Add to Playlist.
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Set the times. Type them however you like,
1430,14:30or2:30 pm, and press Return, or scroll over the hours and minutes. -
Press Play.
While you edit, the playlist tells you what happens next: until when the current time plays, and which wallpaper follows. Check it once before you press Play; it's the quickest way to catch a night scene typed in for 9:00 am instead of 9:00 pm.
How to make your wallpaper follow sunrise and sunset
In a Day & Night playlist, Day can begin at sunrise and Night at sunset. Wallper works both out from your time zone, so it needs no location permission, and the times move with the seasons on their own. In summer the day wallpaper stays up later, and in winter the night one arrives earlier.
Either part can be switched to a fixed time instead, and you can mix the two. Day at sunrise with Night at a fixed 10:00 pm gives you the morning light and a dark desktop from the hour you wind down.
Sunrise and sunset are worked out for your time zone as a whole, so they're an estimate. If you live near the edge of a wide time zone, the real sunrise can come noticeably earlier or later. The times in a Dynamic playlist are the ones you type, and they stay put all year: a dawn scene at 6:40 can play in full daylight in summer and in the dark in winter. If that bothers you, adjust them when the seasons turn.
Ideas for a day of wallpapers
The playlists that look best follow the light outside. A soft, misty scene for dawn sets a quiet start. Something bright and open, like the sea from above, suits the middle of the day. In the evening, warm interiors and city lights coming on feel right, and at night a dark scene with one source of light, snow outside a window or a lit street, keeps the screen easy on the eyes.
The photos in this guide use exactly that set:
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6:40 am: a foggy forest
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12:30 pm: the sea from above
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7:15 pm: a lit street
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11:20 pm: snow falling outside a window
All four are from the Wallper gallery, where you can filter by category and resolution.
A Dynamic playlist can also follow your routine. A work-day version might switch at lunch, so the afternoon feels different from the morning, and go dark at the hour you usually stop. Whatever you choose, keep the motion slow for the hours you work, because a busy loop behind a document gets tiring, and keep the night wallpaper dark near the top and bottom of the screen, where the menu bar and the Dock sit.
Will it keep working through sleep and travel?
Playlists hold their place through sleep, wake and time-zone changes. Close the lid at 6 pm, open it at 8 the next morning, and the playlist shows whatever belongs to 8 am. A MacBook opened in another city lands on the right part of the day there.
The schedule is forgiving, too. Times can sit right next to each other, with no gap required. If two share the same minute, the one you set last plays. A time you haven't given a wallpaper keeps the previous one on screen, so the desktop doesn't go blank.
Each change fades in. The next wallpaper starts playing underneath, then fades over the current one, so there's no black frame between them.
Why isn't my wallpaper changing on schedule?
Open Wallper's menu bar panel first. It always shows what's in charge, for example "Playlist 4 · Night until 7:00 AM", and clicking that line lists your other sources so you can switch. If it names something other than your playlist, another source has taken over. Only one thing drives the desktop at a time: a playlist, Media Sync (the music wallpapers that follow whatever you play), or a wallpaper you set by hand. The last one you chose wins and the others switch themselves off, so picking a wallpaper from the gallery or turning on Media Sync stops the schedule until you start it again.
If the playlist is running but the timing looks wrong, open it and read the line that says what plays next. Sunrise and sunset come from your time zone, so check the one in System Settings › General › Date & Time as well.
For Apple's dynamic wallpapers, look at the menu next to the wallpaper's name in System Settings › Wallpaper. A light or dark still version stays put, so switch it to Dynamic.
Read next
If you'd rather the wallpaper followed Light and Dark mode than the clock, that's a Light & Dark playlist:
Different Wallpapers for Light and Dark Mode on Mac
Set a different wallpaper for Light and Dark mode on Mac: what macOS does by itself, and how to auto switch your own live wallpapers when Dark Mode turns on.
For wallpapers that take turns all day, see the live wallpaper slideshow guide. Every other way to change a Mac wallpaper is in how to change wallpaper on Mac.
