macOS 26 Tahoe Screen Saver issues

Noticing a few issues with Screen Savers in macOS Tahoe developer beta 1 :

  • The command
open x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.ScreenSaver-Settings.extension  

no longer works to open the Screen Savers preference pane. The reason? There is no longer a Screen Saver preference pane - it still exists, but it's now a Modal dialog (that can not be resized) that is opened from within the Wallpaper preference pane, by clicking a button.

  • Something funny is happening with legacyScreensaver - I think that
ScreenSaverView.Init(frame:isPreview)

may be passing wrong values, e.g. the isPreview boolean is false in Preview mode?

  • I've submitted Feedback # FB17895600 about some of these, and will report back more as I figure things out.

Please feel free to add to this thread, thanks!

Answered by DTS Engineer in 843065022

Thanks for testing this stuff immediately and then filing those bugs. Screen savers are such a niche thing that it’s critical to get this issues noted early in the beta cycle.

If you encounter any other issues, please post the bug numbers here so that they’re on my radar (so to speak).

Share and Enjoy

Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"

Yep. Sadly, that’s expected )-:

There are actually a bunch of bugs mentioned in this thread, so let me summarise:

  • FB19580645 — This is the scroll view nib issue. Looking at the underlying bug (r. 157494480) it’s hard to tell when the fix for this will land [1]. Given that, I recommend that you continue to test with macOS and Xcode betas as we seed them.
  • FB6363533, FB19235887 — These are both requests for a new screen saver API based on appex technology. I think it’s safe to say that that won’t happen in macOS 26 |-:
  • FB19201567, FB19204084, FB19206021 — These are all functionality issues with the existing screen saver API. I don’t have any news to share here. Certainly, I don’t expect to see improvements in 26.0b7.

Share and Enjoy

Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"

[1] It’s always hard with nib bugs because part of the code lives in the OS and part of the code lives in Xcode.

macOS 26 Tahoe Screen Saver issues
 
 
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