Timeline for Set macOS wallpaper without re-encoding image
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
7 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 30, 2023 at 5:26 | comment | added | twhb | @bananakid looks like I took too long for that link, but I can confirm that it’s still banded when exported at any resolution in 8-bit color, which I’m assuming is what you’re calling 24-bit, for three channels. I’m using a MacBook Pro 16″ 2019 with hardware resolution 3072 × 1920, the screenshot resolution is 4096 × 2560 (due to me having it set to “More Space”), and I’m not running Boot Camp, though I have in the past. | |
| Feb 25, 2023 at 9:35 | comment | added | bananakid | Here're unresized 24-bit uncompressed PNG & highest-quality (4×4×4) JPG extracted from Solar Gradients HEIC (gradient #6), check if it's got banding when applied as wallpaper. | |
| Feb 25, 2023 at 9:30 | comment | added | bananakid | Another quick thought to consider is it appears you use MacBookPro16,1 or MacBookPro16,4 like I do. macOS has shitty scale-up & scale-down UI scaling. So if you have 3072x1920 image it will be scaled up with unknown crappy algo to stretch across the actual running resolution (you can check this resolution by taking a full screen screen shot). Try re-scaling your gradient to this "true" resolution or to resolution of default gradients from Apple's HEIC which is 5120x2880 @ 24-bit and saving as JPG or HEIC, then setting as wallpaper. This may fix banding. BTW do you happen to run Boot Camp? | |
| Feb 25, 2023 at 9:10 | comment | added | bananakid | Try to lookup file names default.jpg, DefaultDesktop.jpg, wallpaper.jpg (include system files in Stoplight Search). If it fails, attempt this approach (first double-check path is still valid, then disable SIP protection and delete DB file and replace JPG, for sake of reverting things back don't actually delete files but just rename them to .db.backup & .jpg.backup). I'll double-check once I can. | |
| Feb 25, 2023 at 3:39 | comment | added | twhb | @bananakid, thanks, any advice on finding the path? I searched around ~/Library for a while with no luck. | |
| Feb 24, 2023 at 7:50 | comment | added | bananakid | macOS stores current wallpaper somewhere as compressed JPG (I'm not at the computer and cannot double-check the path but it's buried not very deep). It's likely you can just overwrite that "cache" file and reboot to apply changes. | |
| Feb 24, 2023 at 3:59 | history | answered | twhb | CC BY-SA 4.0 |