Apple likes to showcase its new devices with brand new wallpapers, and it’s no different with the latest 24-inch M1 iMac. This time around, the company has made the new wallpapers available for older Macs too. There’s a catch though.
The new wallpapers aren’t located with the rest of the desktop wallpapers, and because of this, you’ll need to do some digging. Here’s how you can use the new wallpapers that were made for the M1 iMac on an older Mac.
How to Get M1 iMac Wallpapers on Older Macs
Apple has bundled these new wallpapers with the macOS Big Sur 11.3 update. Therefore, you need to first check if your Mac is running the updated version of macOS before you look for these wallpapers.
To view this information, click on the Apple icon and select About This Mac from the menu bar.
When you’re ready, follow these simple instructions to find and use the M1 iMac wallpapers:
- Open System Preferences on your Mac from the Dock and head over to the Desktop & Screen Saver section.
- Here, double-click on the Desktop Pictures folder from the left pane. If you don’t see it, expand the Apple category and you will.
- This will take you to the System Library. Here, double-click on the pre-selected Desktop Pictures folder to continue.
- Scroll down until you see a bunch of “hello” wallpaper files. Right-click or Control-click on the wallpaper you like and choose Set Desktop Picture from the context menu.
That’s it. The thumbnails that are shown for these files are Light Mode variants, but you can open them to see the Dark Mode variants as well. If Dark appearance is enabled, the dark variant will be set as your wallpaper automatically.
Enjoy These Fresh New Wallpapers
There are a total of seven new wallpapers to choose from, each of them created to color-match the respective iMac variants, just like the color-matched Magic Keyboard, Magic Mouse, and cables. Thankfully, they all still look really good when paired with a silver or space gray Mac.
While you can surely grab these wallpapers from the web, there’s an obvious benefit to having them pre-installed on your Mac. These wallpapers automatically switch between the dark and light variants depending on your Mac’s system appearance. This wouldn’t be possible with an image file you downloaded from the internet.
Image Credit: Apple