How often do you change your desktop’s wallpaper? Instead of the loud and busy artworks, have you considered using something elegant that pleases your eyes? Well, you’ll only end up wasting time on hundreds of sites that offer wallpapers. We did write about Wallpaper and Screensaver apps for Macs but that was back in 2015. Things have changed a lot since then. Firstly, the latest wallpaper apps offer a more vibrant and curated collection to work appropriately with the Macs and MacBooks. Secondly, they eliminate the entire charade of cropping and adjusting resolutions. Finally, they offer a spectacular selection of photos and ease of switching between your favorite wallpapers without meddling with the screen settings every time. Let’s check out six best wallpaper apps for your Mac. Note: All the apps on this list are compatible with macOS 10.15.6 Catalina. That said, we don’t guarantee that all of them will work on older macOS versions.
1. Wallpaper Wizard
Looking to jazz up your Mac’s desktop and extended workspace? Your search ends at the Wallpaper Wizard 2 app that provides over 25,000 wallpapers and the collection updates every month. The fact that it has categorized and clustered the wallpapers as per interests makes your search quite easy. Whether you are an art or food connoisseur, the app provides images that you can spend a day just checking them out. All the images are in HD and 4K quality, making a world of difference on the Retina Macs and 4K monitors. You can even create a wallpaper playlist called Roll to let the app cycle between them. For multi-monitor setup users, the app also enables you to Roll them through the desktop spaces. You can then cycle between them at regular intervals ranging from 5 minutes to 1 week. With a massive, curated, classified and jaw-dropping collection of HD wallpapers like that, I doubt you’ll ever have to look anywhere else. Wallpaper Wizard costs $9.99 from MacPaw Store as a one-time purchase. You can pay the same amount as a monthly subscription to Setapp, an alternative store to Mac App Store. That will get you free access to several popular (over 150) paid apps for that nominal price. Get Wallpaper Wizard
2. Unsplash Wallpapers
The official Unsplash Wallpapers app is the ultimate resource of copyright-free images and wallpapers to deck up your Mac desktop. The fantastic shots of landscapes and nature photos always feel like a breath of fresh air. The app offers a minimalist and simple interface to change the wallpapers on a Daily, Weekly, or Manually. I love the option “Update on all screens and desktops” since it is quite useful to folks like me who connect the MacBook Air to an external desktop. That means you can use the same wallpaper in a different resolution automatically. Yeah, no need to have a separate wallpaper for the extended desktop space. Unsplash Wallpapers app is free to use and offers a gateway to the crazy collection of the images uploaded regularly. Get Unsplash Wallpapers
3. Irvue
Irvue is quite similar to the Unsplash app with the useful menu bar app. With that, you can let the app refresh photos randomly or from specific collections at predefined intervals ranging from 30 mins to a month. Of course, you can update manually too, but should you? You can always download the wallpapers that you like. Alternatively, you can add new channels apart from the usual Featured one to let the program pick the wallpapers accordingly. Just like Unsplash, Irvue is free to download and use. Get Irvue
4. DailyWall
If your choices are limited only to a handful of categories, DailyWall is the perfect contender app. You can pick wallpapers from categories like Landscapes, Aerial, Dark, Cars, Animals, Nature, Architecture, Food, and Devices. Of course, you can uncheck the ones you don’t like. The only thing that might bother you is the Skip limit. Yeah, you can only skip one photo per day. You can pay $4.99 per month to enjoy features like syncing the same wallpaper across your devices, spaces, favorites, iCloud sync, etc. DailyWall claims of continually updating its collection based on the wallpapers picked by professional photographers from sources like Unsplash, Pexels, and Pixabay. Get DailyWall
5. Wallcat
Don’t let the word cat in the name fool you. The Wallcat app offers a curated compilation of photos that refresh every day. The beautiful part of this app is that it measures only 7.5MB. You can choose between five different ‘channels’ to pick the one that suits your mood. The Light and Dark gradient channels are available only for Macs running macOS 10.15 Catalina and higher. Wallcat is one of those honest apps that provides full credit to the original creator of the photo artwork. The menu bar icon lets you access that creator’s profile from the drop-down. Wallcat is available for $1.99 from the Mac App Store. Get Wallcat
6. NASA Picture of the Day
As the name suggests, the app’s purpose is straightforward – provide you with a new photo every day in high resolution. The coolest part about this app is that every picture comes with an explanation about it written by a professional astronomer. You can download those gorgeous images of the space or continue to enjoy a new one daily. The only possible setback here is that sometimes the photos are in a different aspect ratio and may not fit your desktop background. For instance, I struggled to adjust a few images with the 1400×900 aspect ratio of my MacBook Pro. The same images looked beautiful on the extended 4K or ultrawide monitor with USB C for Macs. The app comes with a 10-day free trial, and after that, you can pay $10 annually to continue using it to nurture your enthusiasm about space. Get NASA Picture of the Day App At the cost of sounding callous, I’ve often downloaded and use the wallpapers suggested through our compilations in the past. However, many didn’t suit the MacBook Air’s native resolution. Also, I wanted something elegant and professional looking.
Bonus: Hologram Desktop
Hologram Desktop is the smart app for those who wish for single-app access to all the scenic wallpapers and cool widgets. The app curates about 5 million wallpapers from Unsplash, Pixabay, and Pexels. You get five-preloaded themes that you can instantly apply and use. The themes are basically a combination of wallpapers and widgets that appear on the dashboard. You can edit the theme by fetching more wallpapers from Unsplash, Pixabay, or Pexels. Then you can program those images to cycle at hourly, daily, or weekly intervals. You can also add widgets by picking from over 25 different customizable widgets to appear from your homescreen. You’ll find widgets that range from showing your system information to weather details. Hologram Desktop app supports Macs running macOS 10.15 Catalina or higher. You can buy the app for $9.99 from the Mac App Store. Get Hologram Desktop You can check out our goldmine of curated wallpaper posts by clicking the Tag link below.
A Fresh Start Everyday
These Wallpaper apps for Mac can transform your desktop with just a few clicks and add to the visual delight. The comfort of changing a wallpaper automatically every day or picking one quickly without opening a browser is priceless. The above article may contain affiliate links which help support Guiding Tech. However, it does not affect our editorial integrity. The content remains unbiased and authentic.
