How to get Mojave Dynamic Desktop wallpaper on Mac, iPhone & Windows

When Mojave, the new version of MacOS, launched in September 2018 it bought a collection of new desktop wallpapers that show a Mojave desert sand-dune as it changes throughout a 24-hour period. 

You don’t have to install Mojave – in fact you don’t even need a Mac, you can get the wallpapers now, by downloading them from the link below.

If you have installed Mojave, you can go ahead and start using Dynamic Desktop now. Here’s an article to help you set it up so that the Mojave image changes throughout the day.

How to get Mojave Wallpaper

You can download the Mojave Wallpaper and use it on your pre-Mojave Mac (or even a PC if you really want to mess with people’s heads).

This Reddit poster has uploaded all the images that combine to make the Dynamic Desktop image of the sand dune that Apple is using to represent Mojave. It’s a 40MB file and you can download it here.

There are a total of 16 images of the same sand-dune in the folder, each one representing a different time of day.

If you would like to use one as your desktop wallpaper on a Mac, follow these instructions. It is also possible to create a Dynamic Desktop style effect, we’ll look at how to do that next.

1. Download the images from the link above.
2. Drag the folder of images to your desktop, or copy the whole folder to Photos. (You may need to unzip them).
3. Right click on your Desktop and choose Change Desktop Background, this will take you to the Desktop & Screen Saver pane in System Preferences.
4. Open a Finder window and drag and drop the folder of images onto the white space below Folders. Your Mojave folder will immediately appear here.
5. Now you can either pick one image from the collection as your desktop image, or, and this is much more fun, you can create your own Dynamic Desktop, we’ll show you how below.

How to get the Mojave Dynamic Desktop effect

You can download the Mojave Wallpaper and create a sudo Mojave Dynamic Desktop feature on your Mac without installing Mojave.

To start you’ll need to download the Mojave wallpaper as above. You can grab the image from this link: images. It’s a 40MB file including all 16 sand-dune images.

Once you have downloaded images onto your Mac, drag the folder of images to your desktop, copy the folder of images to Photos.

Here’s how to set up a Dynamic Desktop effect:

1. Right click on your Desktop and choose Change Desktop Background, this will take you to the Desktop & Screen Saver pane in System Preferences.
2. Open a Finder window and drag and drop the folder of images onto the white space below Folders. Your Mojave folder will immediately appear here.
3. Now onto the Dynamic Desktop trickery. If you would like the Mojave desert images to change throughout the day to give the impression of day and night, then look below the set of images for the option to Change picture. Click in the box to choose this option.
4. You can now choose how often you want the image to change. The options are: Every 5 seconds, Every minute, Every 5 minutes, Every 15 minutes, Every 30 minutes (this is the default), Every hour, and Every day.
5. Since there are 16 images available you could see a day pass every 80 minutes you could set it to every 5 minutes, for example. Alternatively pick every 5 seconds to see a day in just over a minute.
6. If you want to try and match the images to your day, we recommend picking the image that’s most representative of where you are in the day and choosing hourly. If that method doesn’t display a daytime image when you want it to, try switching to Random images, and when you are satisfied that the image displayed fits the time of day, turn off the Random setting.

The only issue with this method of creating a Dynamic Desktop is that here in the UK right now we’re in the height of summer, with long days (the sun was up at 4.45am this morning and will set at 9.20pm). Since there are only eight images that look sufficiently daytime that means you will only get that daylight effect for eight hours of the day, so choose wisely!

If you install Mojave the Dynamic Desktop should be linked to the hours of daylight where you are based.

How to get Mojave Wallpaper for iPhone

Want to use Apple’s sand-dune image on your iPhone too?

Once you have downloaded the images from the link above on your Mac you can AirDrop them to your iPhone, copy them to an iCloud folder, iMessage them to yourself, or just view them here (via the Imgur app), and download the one you like onto your iPhone.

1. Now you have the image on your phone, go to Settings > Wallpaper.
2. Choose a New Wallpaper
3. All Photos
4. And pick the photo you just added.
5. It will place the desert shot in the centre of your iPhone, like this, but if you want to move it around, or scale it, you can just touch your screen and drag, or pinch in or out with two fingers until you are happy.