MacOS Sonoma Wallpapers Issues

Update, some of these wallpapers appear to be loading, albeit very slowly (even on a 1GB network).

I still have no idea whether the shuffle 'continuously' option works and what the interval is supposed to be.

I started a reddit topic on this and apparently more than a couple of people are experiencing the same thing. The "shuffle continuously" feature is not working, even after manually downloading every wallpaper.

I was facing the same download issues, restarted the device a few time and it has started downloading individually now.

I have the same problem, bul still can't download the video wallpapers.

I have the same problem on two iMacs and a MacBook Pro M2 Rebooting does not help solve the problem. Wallpaper loading starts and stops at 20 percent

I have same issues, but have noticed if I select one of the "missing" wallpapers (identified by the download arrow being next to the name) it will download but takes up to 5 minutes to finish downloading at 120Mbps download speeds; and then changes. If I swap to another wallpaper in the middle of the download; for example, in the Underwater section starting the download for "Humpback Whale" and then select "Jack School" before "Humpback Whale" finishes, it appears to pause the "Humpback Whale" download and only resumes when I select it again and leave it selected until it changes the wallpaper. A "Download All" option under each section would be nice and allowing the download to continue in the background, whether it is still selected or not would be helpful also.

I like the Shuffle All option, but would like the ability to Shuffle 2 or 3 verses all 4 (for example shuffle just Landscape and Cityscape) and/or the ability to select multiple individual wallpapers (for example, 5 from Landscape, 7 from Cityscape, 3 from Earth), a "Custom Shuffle" option.

The Shuffle Continuously has not seemed to work for me. I choose it and ran for a couple days and it did not change. Would like the ability to change it to a custom setting or every hour, 30 minutes, even 10 or 15 minutes.

+1, I have the same issue on my M2 Pro

I have this issue even with a "self added" picture. Background stays black.

The solution i found was to go to settings -> displays -> advanced -> show resolutions as list. Then i selected any other resolution and then wallpaper worked. It continued to work even when I switched it back to the original resolution. I like to put the answer first so people dont have to read too much to get what they need.

After updating to Sonoma my desktop was grey. I tried resetting NVRAM and PRAM didnt work. Also tried selecting all different wallpapers and nothing worked. Finally I hooked up an external monitor and to my surprise when I used the external as an extended display all the wallpapers were working on the extended one while my main wallpaper remained grey. Hooking up the external brought up the resolution options for the main that weren't visible before. I changed the resolution for the main and then the wallpapers started to work.

I have the same issue where none of the wallpapers will shuffle. They won't even shuffle a folder in photos without manually downloading each photo. That is not practical when there are over a thousand photos in some folders. It worked fine before updating to Sonoma.

it's pity that worlds largest tech giant cant resolve this tiny basic issue

I imagine these are 1GB+ in size - when I select download, it downloads at 1% of my internet speed, I measure 100KB/s. Normally I get 10MB/s. So that's 1% of my normal speed, and I guess that's why it would take a very long time, were I to wait.

I always have iStat Pro running showing network activity in the menu bar.

They must be hosted on a shoebox somewhere...

If Apple could move these into one of its humongous data centers, that would be great.

If I add a whole photo album then it does nothing. I have t manually select each photo from that album to "your photos" section. Then it shows background correctly. Is this a bug? Before Sonoma I could choose a folder and Mac Mini would display an other photo every other hour.

In my example helps severa times click on wallpaper, and wait a while.

Oh I'm glad I'm not alone. I left it downloading since yesterday and it's still downloading. Haha!

even with a 1 gigabit internet and a wifi 6 router it takes ages to download the wallpapers. worlds most expensive company in the world should be able to solve this in beta

This fixed it for me: go into Mission Control, add a Space, and delete your default space. got the answer from @peterfreeby on X.

Bro how do wallpapers not work in 2023. That's crazy

fr bro this is ridiculous. common Apple L

Still an issue for me, but I at least found a way to surface the errors that are occurring when the download is interrupted, through the Console app. I wrote the paragraphs below after thinking that I was in the clear, since I could tell that the screen saver was actually downloading for once. But before submitting this post I found that it had stopped 😭, with the following console messages:

default	11:32:52.936999-0700	WallpaperAgent	Downloading (62%): AER-F390FE3B

error	11:32:53.227474-0700	idleassetsd	Task <AE6ADF4D-DFF3-4720-8C8E-9A58A6C57A9B>.<1> finished with error [-1001] Error Domain=NSURLErrorDomain Code=-1001 UserInfo={_kCFStreamErrorCodeKey=-2103, NSURLSessionDownloadTaskResumeData=<private>, _NSURLErrorFailingURLSessionTaskErrorKey=<private>, _NSURLErrorRelatedURLSessionTaskErrorKey=<private>, NSLocalizedDescription=<private>, NSErrorFailingURLStringKey=<private>, NSErrorFailingURLKey=<private>, _kCFStreamErrorDomainKey=4}

default	11:32:53.227725-0700	idleassetsd	nw_connection_report_state_with_handler_on_nw_queue [C2] reporting state cancelled

default	11:32:53.228321-0700	idleassetsd	<TVISHTTPRequester: 0x2364ff8c8> URL response etag ("F65A363ECFD3DE3D3B81EBBF06D87809-12") has been updated for url: (https://sylvan.apple.com/itunes-assets/Aerials116/v4/cb/5b/50/cb5b5035-6701-619f-9065-3d7d0e5fbef4/W014_C018_F01_FRC_sdr_4k_qp29_240p_t2160_grover401_tsa.mov)

error	11:32:53.228380-0700	idleassetsd	-[TVISAerialAssetService _downloadAssetWithID:remoteURL:parentProgress:completion:]_block_invoke - Error downloading asset with id: F390FE3B-FA61-483D-BADC-2447F89951BA, from URL: https://sylvan.apple.com/itunes-assets/Aerials116/v4/cb/5b/50/cb5b5035-6701-619f-9065-3d7d0e5fbef4/W014_C018_F01_FRC_sdr_4k_qp29_240p_t2160_grover401_tsa.mov, error: Error Domain=NSURLErrorDomain Code=-1001 "The request timed out." UserInfo={_kCFStreamErrorCodeKey=-2103, NSURLSessionDownloadTaskResumeData=<CFData 0x600001294510 [0x1de7079a0]>{length = 25658, capacity = 65536, bytes = 0x3c3f786d6c2076657273696f6e3d2231 ... 2f706c6973743e0a}, _NSURLErrorFailingURLSessionTaskErrorKey=LocalDownloadTask <AE6ADF4D-DFF3-4720-8C8E-9A58A6C57A9B>.<1>, _NSURLErrorRelatedURLSessionTaskErrorKey=(
    "LocalDownloadTask <AE6ADF4D-DFF3-4720-8C8E-9A58A6C57A9B>.<1>"
), NSLocalizedDescription=The request timed out., NSErrorFailingURLStringKey=https://sylvan.apple.com/itunes-assets/Aerials116/v4/cb/5b/50/cb5b5035-6701-619f-9065-3d7d0e5fbef4/W014_C018_F01_FRC_sdr_4k_qp29_240p_t2

default	11:32:53.228440-0700	idleassetsd	[downloadTask: 1, assetID: F390FE3B-FA61-483D-BADC-2447F89951BA] End

error	11:32:53.228547-0700	idleassetsd	-[TVISScreenSaverService forceDownloadAssetsWithIDs:reply:]_block_invoke - force downloading assets error: Error Domain=TVISAssetServiceManagerErrorDomain Code=-8000 "(null)" UserInfo={FailedAssetIDs={(
    "F390FE3B-FA61-483D-BADC-2447F89951BA"
)}}
default	11:32:53.228918-0700	WallpaperAgent	-[TVISScreenSaverServiceController forceDownloadAssetsWithIDs:completion:]_block_invoke - Force download completed. Error: Error Domain=TVISAssetServiceManagerErrorDomain Code=-8000 "(null)" UserInfo={FailedAssetIDs={(
    "F390FE3B-FA61-483D-BADC-2447F89951BA"
)}}

error	11:32:53.229147-0700	WallpaperAgent	Error downloading representative asset 'F390FE3B-FA61-483D-BADC-2447F89951BA': TVISAssetServiceManagerErrorDomain (-8000) <private>

default	11:32:53.229279-0700	idleassetsd	-[TVISServiceConnection fetchScreenSaverConfigurationWithReply:] - received fetch request for active screensaver config

default	11:32:53.230513-0700	WallpaperAgent	Complete Download: AER-F390FE3B)

.

Everything below was written when I thought the problem had been solved by a restart or update:

This issue had been dogging me for ages—specifically, whenever I'd attempt to download a second aerial screen saver, the progress wheel wouldn't progress at all. Even after waiting for several hours. I tried again today and found that it's actually progressing. I don't know if this is due to a system restart or a recent Sonoma update (I updated to 14.2.1 yesterday).

FWIW, since the progress wheel is so tiny that it makes it very difficult to tell whether the download is progressing, I found that you can follow its percentage progress within the Console app:

1. Open the Console app (e.g. press CMD + Space Bar to open the Spotlight search bar, and enter "Console")
2. Within the Console app, find the search bar at the top right corner of the window.
3. In the search bar, type process:WallpaperAgent to filter the log messages. This will limit messages to only those coming from the "WallpaperAgent" process.
4. If messages aren't already streaming, click "Start streaming" in the main area of the console window.
5. If an aerial screensaver is downloading, you should now see a progress message generate once per second (e.g. "Downloading (62%): AER-F390FE3B")

This is still happening on 15.0 Beta (24A5264n) !! Come on APPLE FIX THIS.. I can't use any my iCloud photos as wallpapers or screen savers it just doesn't work correctly !

I'm back to Ventura several months ago just because of it, and still waiting when Apple fix it! According to these comments nothing has changed yet. Apple, is it you?