Customize your Mac desktop: the complete guide
macOS is beautiful out of the box — but a real desktop isn't just a wallpaper. It's a background that breathes, folder icons that mean something, widgets that show the right information at the right moment, and colors that feel like yours. Here's how to put it all together in a few minutes, with Mac+.
macOS 13 or later. Apple Silicon and Intel. No account required.
1. A wallpaper that lives
The starting point is the wallpaper. The most classic macOS desktop is still a beautiful still image, but a live wallpaper completely changes the feel — especially when the animation is calm, designed not to steal your attention.
Mac+ ships 15 GPU-rendered scenes across 4 families (Atmosphere, Fluid, Geometry, Weather). You can also use your own looping video, or a still image if you prefer restraint. Every scene recolors instantly with one of the 44 palettes.
Dedicated guide: set a live wallpaper on Mac →
2. Folder icons that speak
A clean desktop is one where folders are distinguishable at a glance. Apple's default blue folder is excellent, but neutral — as soon as you have more than three, they blur into each other.
Mac+ ships 52 handcrafted patterns across 24 families. Each pattern is mapped onto the real macOS folder shape (not a square pasted on top), with the correct margins. You can also import your own image. All of it is reversible in one click.
Dedicated guide: custom folder icons for Mac →
3. Useful widgets on your desktop
macOS Sonoma brought Notification Center widgets onto the desktop, and that's great. Mac+ adds a second family, designed to live on the desktop alongside a live wallpaper: a large clock, date, Focus, timer, season, weekend, battery, storage… 12 widgets total, in 3 sizes and 4 shapes.
They live on the desktop layer, behind your windows — so they're never in the way when you work, and always there when you clear your screen.
Dedicated guide: desktop widgets on Mac →
4. Coherent palettes
A desktop that feels pro isn't just a nice wallpaper; it's a coherent whole. Mac+ ships 44 ready-to-use palettes + a creator to build your own. The palette recolors the animated scene instantly, and you can match it to your folder icons.
5. Stay light, even on a MacBook Air
A poorly-built live wallpaper drains a battery. A well-built one is barely noticeable. Mac+ puts all rendering on the GPU (Metal), caps FPS (30, 60 or 120), auto-pauses when the screen sleeps or an app takes fullscreen, and lets you tune the internal resolution.
Result: on a MacBook Air M1, the battery impact is marginal and the app stays out of the way.
In 30 seconds, with Mac+
- Download Mac+ and drop it into your Applications folder.
- Open the panel from the menu bar.
- Scene + palette → live wallpaper. Icons tab → folders. Widgets tab → widgets.
- Tune FPS and resolution if you want to manage battery cost. Close the panel.