Screensavers fell out of vogue a very long time in the past, however Apple’s Aerial screensaver seems to be so lovely, it simply may make you rethink. In truth, with its beautiful visuals, it would simply be one of the best Mac screensaver round.
The Aerial screensaver began on the Apple TV, exhibiting beautiful, sweeping helicopter pictures of the world’s biggest pure landscapes, underwater sights and cityscapes — even photographs from house. Now, when you have a desktop show arrange someplace prominently in your own home, you may get the identical lovely vistas in your laptop with the Aerial screensaver for Mac.
Right here’s the place to seek out this lovely Mac screensaver, plus some setup ideas that may actually assist it shine.
arrange the Mac Aerial screensaver
As soon as important for stopping display screen burn-in on previous CRT screens, screensavers now not serve a sensible function with LCD shows. However that doesn’t imply they’ve disappeared totally. They’ll nonetheless deliver a contact of magnificence and character to an idle display screen. Apple’s Aerial screensaver, with its sweeping cinematic footage, turns your Mac right into a transferring artwork piece.
And with OLED shows probably coming to the MacBook Professional, they might as soon as once more serve a sensible function in stopping burn-in. Right here’s the way it works.
Desk of Contents:
- Replace your Mac to macOS Sonoma
- Set your Mac to maintain the show on
- Allow the Aerial display screen saver
- Present as wallpaper
- Extra superior macOS Sonoma options
Replace your Mac to macOS Sonoma
First, you might want to replace to macOS 14 Sonoma or later. Examine which model you’re on by going to the Apple menu within the higher left, then clicking About This Mac. If it says you’re operating macOS 14 or later, you’re already good.
In any other case, go to System Settings > Normal > Software program Replace to put in it. From an older model of macOS, this can be in System Preferences > Software program Replace.
macOS Sonoma runs on the iMac (2019 or later), iMac Professional (2017), MacBook Air (2018 or later), MacBook Professional (2018 or later), Mac Mini (2018 or later), Mac Professional (2019 or later) and Mac Studio (all fashions).
Set your Mac to maintain the show on
After you’ve up to date, open System Settings. In case you don’t already use a screensaver in your Mac, you might want to change a couple of settings first. Click on Lock Display screen from the sidebar. Be sure that the time you set for “Begin Display screen Saver” is lower than for “Flip Show Off.”
For instance, you may set Begin Display screen Saver to 5 minutes and Flip Show Off to 2 hours.
Allow the Aerial display screen saver
Screenshot: D. Griffin Jones/Cult of Mac
Now, within the Settings sidebar, click on Display screen Saver. On the prime, you may choose a selected scene, however I extremely advocate scrolling right down to Shuffle Aerials and hitting Shuffle All.
It’ll rotate by way of all the units, downloading new ones each every so often to maintain your Mac screensaver recent.
Alternatively, you may choose a selected set — all of the underwater scenes, all of the landscapes, all of the cityscapes, and so on.
Present as wallpaper
Again on the prime of the Display screen Saver panel, you may allow Present as wallpaper. This can allow one other actually cool function of the Aerials screensavers.
While you unlock your Mac, the screensaver will gently come to a cease to change into your new desktop background. It’ll pause the place you permit off. When your Mac goes idle once more, your home windows will disappear and the screensaver will choose up proper there.
It’s so cool!
Extra superior macOS Sonoma options
The Aerial Mac screensaver is one in all many nice options in macOS Sonoma. Now that you just’re operating Apple’s newest, you should definitely discover the remaining. We now have an article with 35 extra macOS Sonoma options in addition to a video you may sit again and watch.
We initially revealed this text on find out how to arrange the Aerial Mac screensaver on February 23, 2024. We up to date the knowledge on June 27, 2025.