Mountain Lion’s hidden wallpapers

Jul 30

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If you’ve been enjoying Mountain Lion’s beautiful new Screensaver images, like National Geographic, Aerial and Cosmos, you might like to have some of those images as wallpapers for your Desktops in Mission Control.
 
First, from a Finder window, navigate all the way to here:

[Macintosh HD] > System > Library > Frameworks > Screensaver.framework > Versions > A > Resources > Default Collections

Select the four folders inside and then press ‘command’ and ‘c’ on the keyboard. Navigate to your Pictures folder from any Finder window’s sidebar and press ‘command’ and ‘v’ to copy the folders and images.

You can now add them to your collection of available Desktop pictures by clicking the Desktop tab in

 > System Preferences… > Desktop & Screensaver

and clicking the plus ‘+’ button in the box underneath the list of folders on the left. From the window that pops up, choose ‘Pictures > National Geographic-1’and hit ‘Choose’.

Repeat for any of the others (Aerial, Cosmos, Nature Patterns) that you want to add. 🙂

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About philastokes

Independent Software Developer, Technical Writer and Researcher at SentinelOne. Explaining the unexplainable with images, video and text. Scripting anything imaginable in AppleScript, Bash, Python and Swift.

Posted on July 30, 2012, in Mountain Lion and tagged , , , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink. 18 Comments.

  1. Matt | June 27, 2013 at 22:04

    I dont have the screensaver.framework file when i navigate to this place?

    • philastokes | June 27, 2013 at 23:20

      Hi Matt, could you be looking in the wrong library? There are at least 3 ‘Library’ folders on your mac. It’s not

      Hard Disk > Library

      nor is it

      Home > Library

      The right one is

      Hard Disk > System > Library

      And of course you must be looking on either 10.7 or 10.8. This doesn’t apply to Snow Leopard or earlier.

  2. Paul | March 22, 2013 at 14:15

    How did you get the date and time onto your desktop? I like it!

  3. Cindy | March 17, 2013 at 02:38

    Thanks so much. Was looking high and low for these files. They’re well hidden. Fabulous images, especially the National Geographic ones

  4. Jana | January 25, 2013 at 17:06

    Hi Phil,
    any ideas how to install the national geographic screensaver on lion 10.7???

    • philastokes | January 25, 2013 at 17:10

      If they’re not included in the Screensaver.framework folder then you can’t install them unless you have (or know someone with) a Mountain Lion installation. Then you could copy them from that machine to your Lion machine.

  5. jerrold fogarty | January 15, 2013 at 11:32

    Sorry…..Your directions on how to get hidden screen savers for Lion 10.8.2, iMac, didn’t work for me. I tried several times with no success. Directions were followed step by step. Lion is in perfect working condition too.

    • philastokes | January 15, 2013 at 11:36

      This only works for Mountain Lion (10.8.x), not Lion (10.7.x).

      In what way does it “not work” for you? Can you be more specific. Can you successfully navigate to the location

      HDD > System > Library > Frameworks > Screensaver.framework > Versions > A > Resources > Default Collections?

      What’s inside?

  6. Gerrit | January 8, 2013 at 21:56

    You don’t need to copy them, just link them to your system preferences by dragging them into the left pane of the Desktop&Screensaver tab.

    • philastokes | January 8, 2013 at 23:25

      That’s true, but then you risk the chance that they get removed by an update or upgrade in the future. Moreover, by copying them into a User’s account it means that that user can still have access to them even if that account does not have Admin user privileges.

  7. Andrew | August 28, 2012 at 04:30

    actually scratch that, i found the library folder (i hade to make it unhidden) ANYWAYs, Just like Eric ^ said…..I do not have a frameworks folder….any suggestions?

  8. Andrew | August 28, 2012 at 04:21

    I have no idea how to get there? Ive had my Macbook Pro for a year now but I am not sure how you got there? Any suggestions? I dont even know where to go once i open up finder? Help, I really want these wallpapers!

  9. Eric Schram | August 25, 2012 at 03:55

    my Screensaver.framework icon is not there….any thoughts?

    • Kanti Kuijk | January 9, 2013 at 23:57

      Hi Eric
      Are you sure you’ve chosen the Library directory inside the System directory?
      I made that also made that mistake.
      I hope this helped you and a happy new year!!

  10. Brandon | August 12, 2012 at 00:14

    Thanks a million! I always loved looking at my screensaver and seeing those national geographic pics. This tutorial is perfect.

    But seeing your screenshot, I really really like how the time is displayed like that on your wallpaper? 3rd Party app? Or is this a setting straight from Mountain Lion?

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