How to create dynamic wallpapers for macOS

Dynamic wallpapers — the ones that shift from dawn to dusk as your day progresses — are one of macOS's nicest small touches. Apple ships a handful, but you can make your own. It's not hard. You just need a set of images and a free app.

How dynamic wallpapers work

A dynamic wallpaper is a single HEIC file containing multiple images plus metadata that tells macOS when to show each one. The timing works two ways:

Time-based — each image is assigned a clock time (7 AM, noon, 6 PM, etc.)
Solar-based — images are tied to the sun's position at your location, so transitions track actual sunrise and sunset

There's also a simpler variant: appearance-based, which just has a light and dark version and switches with your system appearance. Less cinematic, but easy to make.

What you need

6–16 images. All the same resolution, following a progression from morning to night. More images = smoother transitions.
Consistent composition. Same subject, same framing, different lighting. Think timelapse photography.
A creation tool. Dynaper (free on the Mac App Store) is the easiest option.

Making a dynamic wallpaper with Dynaper

1. Prepare your images

Shoot or collect a series — 8 images is a good balance between smooth transitions and manageable file size. Resolution should be at least 3840×2160, ideally 5120×2880 for Retina displays.

Name them in order: 01_dawn.jpg, 02_morning.jpg, etc. Dynaper will try to auto-detect timing from filenames.

2. Import into Dynaper

Open Dynaper, click +, select all your images. They'll appear in a timeline. If the automatic time detection doesn't look right, click "Autosuggest" to distribute them evenly across 24 hours.

3. Set the timing

Two choices here:

Time-shifting — you pick exact hours for each image. Simpler to set up, transitions happen at the same time year-round.
Solar-shifting — you define sun elevation angles for each image. More realistic (follows actual daylight), but more fiddly to configure.

For most people: time-shifting is fine. Solar is better if you photographed a real location and want the wallpaper to match actual sunset times.

4. Export

Click "Export HEIC." The file lands wherever you save it. Check "Set as wallpaper" to apply immediately.

Keep the file size under 30 MB if possible — larger files load slower when switching between Spaces.

Ideas for source images

Your own photos. Set up a camera on a tripod and shoot the same scene every few hours. Real timelapse photography makes the best dynamic wallpapers because the transitions are perfectly natural.
AI-generated scenes. Generate the same location in different lighting conditions. Consistency is easier to maintain than with real photography.
Illustrations or gradients. Abstract backgrounds that shift in color temperature — cool blues in the morning, warm amber at sunset, deep navy at night.
City skylines. Dawn, golden hour, blue hour, night. Cities photograph well at every time of day.

Common mistakes

Inconsistent resolution. If one image is 4K and another is 1080p, the wallpaper will look wrong. All images must be identical dimensions.
Too few images. With only 2–3 images the transitions feel abrupt — you go from "daytime" to "nighttime" with nothing in between.
Jarring transitions. Place your images next to each other before building the wallpaper. If two adjacent images feel like a jump cut, add one in between.
Ignoring dark mode. Your dynamic wallpaper should look good regardless of whether the user runs light or dark mode. Test both.

Testing your wallpaper

After applying, you can't fast-forward time easily (changing your system clock works but is annoying). Instead, preview all frames in Dynaper before exporting. Look at each image in sequence and ask: would this transition feel natural if it happened gradually over an hour?

The built-in dynamic wallpapers

If you want dynamic wallpapers without the work, macOS ships several in System Settings → Wallpaper. Recent versions (Sequoia, Sonoma, Ventura) each added new ones. They're well-made and free — good reference material for how transitions should feel.

For pre-made wallpapers that look great at every hour, Wallpapery offers curated collections with automatic rotation — not dynamic in the HEIC sense, but fresh throughout the day.