In this lesson for macOS Mojave, I look at the new Dynamic Desktop feature. With the Dynamic Desktop, the desktop picture will change based on the time of day. There are two dynamic desktops available – Mojave and Solar Gradients. See how this works in the lesson on what’s new in macOS Mojave.
Video Transcript (video also has closed captions):
Now, let’s take a look at another new feature in macOS Mojave, Dynamic Desktop. With a dynamic desktop, the desktop will change throughout the day, depending on its time. Let’s take a look at the dynamic desktop in macOS Mojave. Let’s go to my Mac.
Right now, my desktop picture will not change; this is a static image. With a dynamic desktop, what we can do is we can have the image change throughout the day. During the day, it’ll be a lighter background. At night, it will be a darker background. To enable this, what we do is we go down to our System Preferences. Then we go over to Desktop & Screen Saver.
Now, what we want to do is we want to make sure that we’re looking at our Desktop options. From here, you’re going to see we have two options for Dynamic Desktop. I have Mojave day here. During the day, it’s going to show the desert in a daylight setting. When it gets at night, it’s going to show it in a night setting. It’s almost like we have a window into the desert, and we see the sunrise and sunset and how it reflects on the dune.
Right now, as I’m recording this, it’s about 11:00 AM. Let’s go ahead and move this out of the way a little bit. When I click on this, you’re going to see that the desktop will change. Now, I’m going to go and move this window out of the way.
What’s going to happen throughout the day is this desktop here will change. As the day goes on and goes towards evening, this picture will darken up. It’s a dynamic desktop. If you do not want it to be a dynamic desktop, let’s go and bring our window back up; what you can do is change this to light; it’s just going to be a still picture. Now, it is light. Then we can also change it to dark. Now, it is a darker picture. You can also select these down here under desktop pictures. This is my lighter picture. This is my darker picture. We have another dynamic desktop. Let’s go over to the right here.
This is called Solar Gradients. During the day, we’re going to have a lighter blue, and at night, it’s going to be a darker blue, and it will change throughout the day. I click on it, and now we can see we have a lighter blue, which will get darker as the day goes on.
We cannot select a still picture for this. You can see, we do not have this option for this dynamic desktop. If I go back over to Mojave, you’re going to see I have those options. In addition to dynamic desktop, Apple did add other desktop pictures. We have Desert 1. Let’s move this window out of the way. Desert 2, Desert 3, Desert 4, Desert 5, and Desert 6. These are not dynamic desktops. They will not change throughout the day.
That’s the new dynamic desktop in macOS Mojave.