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

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.)

This is incredibly, deeply embarrassing and stupid. My eyes are sensitive to bright white so I minimize my exposure on many web browsers and often have very specific accessibility settings and accent/desktop colors chosen and spend the last few minutes figuring out why I could choose a specific dark gray color that's available by default but why I couldn't darken this via a slider in the color picker. LOL

I have the same bug, no idea how to fix it. I went to Displays > Color profile but all I see is HP27er (my monitor), which is in a drop-down menu with what I suppose are other displays listed. I don't see any colours, even Apple preset colours, in this menu. I can't read any of the document/file names on my monitor now and I'm desperate and non-techy). Please help!

Well, this just keeps getting more and more frustrating.

I held off on updating one of my Macs, but finally decided to yesterday. Thinking ahead, I put all the custom color swatches in my Pictures folder and changed all the backgrounds to use them instead of custom colors.

Except...

After the update, all the backgrounds were white. Even using the images. So, I changed them all again, and then shortly thereafter I had to reboot for another reason. While the login screen was the blue I'd expected, it was the much brighter blue of the old custom color. And, after logging in, all the backgrounds were white again. So, I once again set up my backgrounds with the custom color images. We shall see, but it's getting really annoying.

Meanwhile, the machine I originally responded to this post about, the M4 Mac Studio, reverted to the "temporary" custom colors instead of the color images I'd created. I had to go back and set them all up again.

If I had more time on my hands, I'd start digging into logs and file opening attempts to see if there's a plist file that's not being accessed correctly or something.

Here's hoping 15.4.1 will address this. For some, I know it's a minor issues, but if you rely on the background colors as some of us do, it's really a problem.

FWIW, it's an unfortunate bug for some. However, if I set a color jpg/png/webp image ot a preferred color it never changes for me across restarts/reboots, on three different Macs running Sequoia 15.4.

Thanks for the workaround.

He also wrote "Gulp" lol I think he was using an iPad. I mean, afterall, it's the same on all my Macs running Sequoia 15.4, also yours, and at least three other users so far.

How do I create that RGB image?

It isn't logical to refuse to use a very simple workaround while you're waiting for a fix. It's pretty much a guarantee that won't happen until next update comes out in, oh, two months.

If then. 😎

Yup, there are various ways to clip out a tiny image so you can create the color you want to use as a wallpaper tint.

i totally agree with you