Custom wallpaper color shows as white and unable to change after macOS 15.4 update on Mac mini

This problem is on all my Macs. Since I'm visually-impaired, I use some pretty specific background colors to let me know which of my workspaces I'm on. This really broke things for me, I was able to come up with some colors from the "stock" color pallet, but they are nowhere near as useful to me as the custom ones I created. I guess I could go the "small RGB image" route, but it'd be better if Apple just fixed this.

Faster than my first method.

1. Open any app that can fill a color of anything on the screen. Such as Word, Pages, etc.
2. In Pages, I chose a box shape and filled it with a color I wanted. Size is irrelevant, other than too small.
3. Press Command+Shift+4 and draw a tiny square over the color you filled.
4. A .png image will be saved to your desktop.
5. Put that .png image in the Pictures folder of your user account.
6. Open the Wallpaper settings and choose your image.

Dan Cornett wrote:

Same for me ... custom colors all show as white.

It's the same for everyone. It's a known bug in Sequoia 15.4. You can send a bug report from the feedback page.

Feedback - macOS - Apple

Kurt Lang wrote:

Because it's a bug that many users, but not all, are seeing in 15.4.

I wonder how many users aren't seeing it. I see it on three different Macs running 15.4.

Lacking any other image editor, you can make one in Preview.

1) Pick any small image on your Mac. Doesn't matter what it is. Picture of a dog, whatever.

2) Copy the image to a new name that makes sense to you. Such as WallpaperTint.

3) Open that in Preview and press Command+0 (zero) to display the image 1:1

4) Draw a tiny rectangle anywhere on the image and press Command+K to crop the image. Hold the Shift key down to constrain the shape to a perfect rectangle.

5) Press Command and the + key a few times to make the image much bigger on screen than it actually is.

6) In the menu bar, go to: Tools > Annotate > Rectangle . Drag the corners out (and beyond the edges a bit) so the rectangle covers the entire image.

7) Set the frame color to null:

8) Set the fill color to whatever color you want. Click Show Colors if you don't want to use any of the presets. If you set the color panel next to your image, you can watch the color change as you move the sliders. You'll see something like this:

9) Do a Save As to save your image as a PNG (if it isn't already a PNG). As small as it is, JPEG may create unwanted artifacts in the file, resulting in an image that isn't a perfectly flat tint.

Because it's a bug that many users, but not all, are seeing in 15.4.

If you want to use a particular color, create a tiny RGB image, like 5 x 5 pixels, in the color you want and put it in the Pictures folder of your user account.

Then select that image in System Settings. It will automatically tile to fill the screen.

frankly speaking, it's quite annoying problem.

let's hope it will be solved soon

I agree. I have been using a custom wall paper for 10 years, now it isn’t available. I don t want a work a round just fix the broken issue.

This was a very avoidable error. That it managed to get out the door unnoticed is almost hard to believe. But I'd be very surprised if it isn't in whatever update is next. As minor as it is (in the grand scheme of things), it may be one of those times where Apple pulls the update, fixes things like this, then puts it out again as the same version number.

Even faster (if you're seeing what I saw in settings) - In Settings -> Wallpaper, the custom color I had selected was still showing up as selected, next to the white block showing what my nice custom color would look like on the real desktop 😂 Just command-shift-4 on that little custom color chip, holding down command to keep it square

The only advantage I can see to using the workaround (for me) is the ability to stash those color swatches on an iClod drive and have the exact same colors available on all my Macs. Given my vision, I really rely on that technique to help me know where I am in my various desktops.

Of course, I'm not sure why this was missed, unless everyone at Apple uses pictures for wallpaper.

So... I screen shot a color I wanted and uploaded it to the custom color window. It worked... once... now when I open OS my wallpaper is the Apple "forest" photo?!?!.. wassup with that... kinda funny. I guess weʻll have to wait for the "bug fix".

The only person I know of so far is BDAqua, who noted in the Lounge custom colors work for him. But it seems the bug is appearing for more users than not.

Edit: I just noticed the extended responses in the Lounge topic. I did see that BDAqua wrote iPad Air, but I assumed that was just a written mistake and he meant a MacBook Air.

You can create such a tiny file for this, it's just as easy to email it/them to the other Macs.

Of course, I'm not sure why this was missed, unless everyone at Apple uses pictures for wallpaper.

Apple will never say, but if anyone checked at all, they had to have only clicked on the 19 default colors, saw that they worked and declared it good.

I'm not sure what you mean by uploaded. After using GraphicConverter to create 16x16 images with the color swatches I wanted saved out in PNG format, I stuck them into my ~/Pictures folder and named them in a way that put them at the head of the list. That worked fine; when I changed background and scrolled down to the "Pictures" section near the bottom, there they were. All worked fine, and now as a bonus I've used it on all my other mMacs to make the colors consistent.

(Pretty much the only part of my vision that works is the peripheral, so it allows me to see what desktop I'm on out of the "corner of my eye" while switching. I've used the same colors pretty much since Apple introduced multiple desktops; it works well for me.)