# macOS 27 hides a solar scheduler for the Landscape wallpapers — here's how to turn it on

> Source: https://macplus.pro/macos-27-automatic-solar-wallpaper.html  
> Language: en  
> Updated: 2026-10-16

macOS 27's solar scheduler has been on by default since beta 6, yet the release, macOS 27.0, still hides the `Automatic` option: Apple hasn't shipped a wallpaper registry with solar coordinates. A local `entries.json` with `combineVariants` and solar values added is reported to reveal it on 27.0, without `sudo`.

macOS 27 Golden Gate contains a solar scheduler that groups the four variants of a Landscape aerial under one entry and picks the right one from the sun's position. Apple enabled it by default in beta 6, but even the release, macOS 27.0, shipped without the matching wallpaper registry, so the `Automatic` option is still hidden.

Revised 23 September 2026

First written on 28 August 2026 against developer beta 6 (`26A5416b`, 17 August 2026) and developer beta 7 (`26A5421a`, 24 August 2026); revised after macOS 27.0 (`26A428`) shipped on 14 September 2026. The procedure is still reported from two sources, the MacRumors thread and pdfux's gist, whose author now lists 27.0 and the first 27.2 developer beta (`26B5086k`) as tested. One check is our own: on 23 September 2026, the aerial registry Apple serves for macOS 27 still had no solar coordinates for Tahoe or Golden Gate. No macOS 27 machine was available here.

By [Adrien Pennetier](https://macplus.pro/about.html)

macOS developer, creator of Mac+

Updated 2026-10-16 · 8 min read

![Mac desktop showing the Mac+ Aurora scene drawing continuously, where a macOS 27 Landscape aerial only animates at lock and unlock](https://macplus.pro/img/scene-aurore.jpg)

macOS 27 picks which aerial fits the sun; it still only plays it when you lock or unlock the Mac.

## Three different things macOS calls a dynamic wallpaper

Three unrelated mechanisms end up filed under the same phrase, which is why most of what circulates about macOS 27 is wrong before it even starts.

**Dynamic Wallpapers** are the oldest of the three. Apple's wallpaper guide describes them in one line: *“These images brighten and darken, based on the time of day for your current location.”* One HEIC file, several baked exposures, nothing in motion — the desktop has behaved that way since Mojave, per Apple’s June 2018 announcement of Dynamic Desktop.

**Aerials** are the ones routinely mistaken for live wallpapers. Landscape, Cityscape, Underwater and Earth are video clips, and Apple is just as precise about when they run: *“These aerial images animate as you lock or unlock your Mac, showing dramatic views. By default, the aerial wallpaper you select is also used as your screen saver.”*

The third thing is what macOS 27 adds. A **solar scheduler** sits on top of the Aerials: it collapses the four variants of one landscape into a single entry in System Settings, then decides which variant is current from the position of the sun. In macOS 26 that logic existed as an internal `WallpaperExtensionCore.SolarTrigger`; for macOS 27, according to `mactracker` in the MacRumors thread, Apple “moved and expanded that machinery into a new centralized `WallpaperExtensionKit.SolarTrigger`”.

*Three mechanisms, three behaviours — using Apple's own wording*

| What it is | What actually moves | Since when |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Dynamic Wallpaper (HEIC) | Nothing moves; the image brightens and darkens with the time of day | Mojave |
| Aerial: Landscape, Cityscape, Underwater, Earth | A .mov clip that plays as you lock or unlock the Mac, then settles | Documented in Apple's current wallpaper guide |
| Solar scheduler (`WallpaperExtensionKit.SolarTrigger`) | Nothing new moves; it picks which of four aerial variants is current | macOS 27, internal in macOS 26 |

## Why the Automatic option doesn't appear on your Mac

Because nothing is locked. This is what every copy-pasted tutorial gets backwards: the mechanism is already running, and what Apple has not delivered is the data it feeds on.

`mactracker`, who pulled the feature apart in the MacRumors thread on 18 August 2026, puts it flatly: *“The only reason you're not seeing the Automatic display option is that Apple hasn't shipped a compatible wallpaper registry with solar coordinates for the Golden Gate and Tahoe wallpapers.”* On how finished the work is, same post: *“They have removed the private feature flag, so the feature is quite mature.”* And on what remains: *“All it takes now is for Apple to push a new wallpaper registry under `https://configuration.apple.com/configurations/internetservices/aerials/resources-config-27-0.plist` with solar coordinates.”*

pdfux's gist, written against the same builds, describes the hole from the other end: beta 6 ships a registry holding four separate Tahoe and Golden Gate wallpapers, and *“neither collection has `combineVariants` or `variant.solar` metadata in the registry, so you won't see the Automatic option”*.

So the procedure further down unlocks nothing and patches nothing. It hands macOS 27 the catalogue Apple has not published yet. Two things follow. The private feature flag people still pass around is now pointless — more on that below. And the day Apple pushes that registry, everything on this page becomes unnecessary. That was the expected outcome at release, and it did not happen: the registry file that `resources-config-27-0.plist` points to is dated 2 September 2026, and when we checked it on 23 September it had no `variant.solar` entry at all, and `combineVariants` only on the light and dark versions of the abstract Golden Gate wallpaper.

## What the procedure needs — and what it doesn't

The numbered procedure at the bottom of this page reproduces what pdfux documented and what the MacRumors thread discusses, first tested there on two builds: `26A5416b` (developer beta 6 / public beta 4, released 17 August 2026) and `26A5421a` (developer beta 7 / public beta 5, released 24 August 2026). The gist's revision history then adds developer beta 8 (`26A5425a`), the release candidate and, on 18 September 2026, the release itself, macOS 27.0 (`26A428`), plus the first 27.2 developer beta (`26B5086k`). No Mac running macOS 27 was available here, so nothing below is offered as a first-hand test — it is attributed reporting of two sources that agree. A detail that trips people up when they check their own build: the prefix is still `26A` while the marketing version is 27, the same one-step offset that made macOS 26 Tahoe ship as `25A` builds, and the kernel reports `Darwin Kernel Version 27.0.0`.

What the procedure does *not* require is worth stating, because it is unusual for this kind of tweak: no `sudo`, no restart, and no disabling SIP. It reads one file inside `/System` — read-only access, which macOS allows — and otherwise writes only into your own `~/Library` and your own user defaults domain. Three commands undo all of it.

The caveats are real, though, even on the release. Every key involved is private and undocumented: don't do it on the machine you work on, take a Time Machine backup first, and expect a later update — 27.2 is already in beta — to change the catalogue and quietly undo everything. One more consequence follows directly from the mechanism described above: while `AerialManifestForceLocal` is set, the catalogue is pinned to your local file, so any wallpaper Apple later pushes through `resources-config-27-0.plist` will not reach you until you remove the override.

## What altitude and azimuth are worth, and when the wallpaper really flips

Two numbers per variant, and the gist defines them without ambiguity: *“`altitude`: how high the Sun is above or below the horizon”* and *“`azimuth`: the Sun's compass direction, where `180°` means south”*. From there, macOS *“calculates the Sun's current coordinates using your location, date, and time”* and *“selects whichever wallpaper variant is closest to the Sun's current position”*. Altitude separates day from night; azimuth acts as an east/west barrier, which is what stops a morning variant from winning in the evening at the same sun height. The values themselves are Apple's, recovered from an earlier macOS 27 beta variant catalogue — not numbers someone made up.

*Solar coordinates per variant, and the switch times produced by pdfux's script at latitude 37.3230 / longitude −122.0322, UTC−7, on 18 August 2026*

| Variant | Altitude | Azimuth | Becomes active at |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Morning — `TA_L_001` / `GG_A_SUNSET` | 5° | 160° | 05:08 |
| Day — `TA_L_002` / `GG_A_DAY` | 35° | 180° | 08:13 |
| Evening — `TA_D_001` / `GG_A_EVENING` | 5° | 180° | 20:38 |
| Night — `TA_D_002` / `GG_A_NIGHT` | −35° | 140° | 01:12 |

Four switches per 24 hours, then, drifting a little each day with the sun. Those four times are specific to that latitude and that date; run the same setup further north and the night slot grows at the expense of the morning one.

Two quirks to expect. `GG_A_SUNSET` is deliberately used for the morning position, because Golden Gate ships no separately named Morning video — the gist says so explicitly. And the whole calculation depends on your location, so with Location Services off macOS falls back on a point representative of your time zone, the same behaviour documented by the third-party `aerial-dynamic-wallpaper` project. The gist also warns that the time of day at which you select the wallpaper may affect the transitions on the first day.

## The TahoeCombined flag no longer works: what to remove

Before beta 6, the same result went through a private feature flag, with `sudo` and a restart:

- `sudo mkdir -p /Library/Preferences/FeatureFlags/Domain`
- `sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/FeatureFlags/Domain/Wallpaper TahoeCombined -dict Enabled -bool true`

That flag also targeted a different catalogue file — `entries_variants.json`, not the `entries.json` used today. If you copied those two lines from a page written in July or early August and nothing happened, that is the reason: pdfux's updated gist states that *“the `TahoeCombined` feature flag is no longer needed nor functional”*, precisely because Apple removed the private flag and turned the behaviour on by default.

Clear it out before doing anything else, so you are not debugging two mechanisms at once:

- `sudo defaults delete /Library/Preferences/FeatureFlags/Domain/Wallpaper TahoeCombined`

## The honest limit: it schedules videos, it doesn't animate your desktop

Half a truth circulates in each direction, so here are both halves. Yes, these really are videos. The asset IDs read `GG_A_*`, where the A stands for Aerial, and the files are .mov. MacRumors, covering the beta 6 additions on 17 August 2026, notes that Golden Gate Day and Golden Gate Evening *“animate when you unlock your Mac, and can be set as a screen saver”*, and that as a screen saver both *“feature cars slowly driving across the bridge”*. The thread agrees: the media remain separate videos, and the scheduler selects the closest matching one. Playing them is the job of a separate process, the same one behind [what WallpaperVideoExtension does to your CPU](https://macplus.pro/wallpapervideoextension-high-cpu-macos-tahoe.html).

And no, they do not run on your desktop. Apple's own sentence is the ceiling here: aerials *“animate as you lock or unlock your Mac”*. Between two unlocks, the desktop shows the corresponding still frame and nothing else moves. The Golden Gate scenes hit exactly that limit, and [why the Golden Gate wallpaper stops moving](https://macplus.pro/macos-27-golden-gate-wallpaper-not-animating.html) is explained on its own page.

Put the two halves together and the solar mechanism is exactly what its class name says: a trigger. It decides *which* of the four videos plays at the next lock or unlock. That buys you four distinct moods a day on a desktop that is otherwise motionless — a genuine improvement, and not at all the thing people are after when they ask [why a Mac desktop doesn't keep moving like an iPhone Lock Screen](https://macplus.pro/live-wallpaper-like-iphone-on-mac.html).

## If you want a desktop that really moves — or you're on an Intel Mac

Start with the hard constraint, because it closes the question for a lot of readers: macOS 27 Golden Gate drops Intel altogether. MacRumors' roundup is blunt — *“macOS Tahoe is the last version of macOS that will run on Intel-based Macs”* — and the compatibility list is Apple Silicon only: MacBook Neo (2026), MacBook Air and MacBook Pro from 2020, iMac from 2021, Mac mini from 2020, Mac Studio from 2022, Mac Pro from 2023. A 2019 iMac will never show the `Automatic` option, no matter what anyone edits in a catalogue file.

On macOS 26 there is a third-party route to something adjacent: the `BiAksoy/aerial-dynamic-wallpaper` project extracts frames from the Aerial .mov files and builds a classic solar HEIC out of them. It is not the macOS 27 scheduler, and it produces no motion — it produces a still image that shifts with the hour.

If what you actually want is a background that keeps drawing while you work, that is a different category of software, and it is worth reading through the [free animated wallpaper options on macOS](https://macplus.pro/free-animated-wallpapers-mac.html) before paying for anything. [Mac+](https://macplus.pro/live-wallpaper-mac.html) renders its scenes live on the GPU with Metal rather than decoding a clip, runs on macOS 13 and later, on both Intel and Apple Silicon, and is free to use, with €1.99/month or €9.99 one-time to unlock everything (prices as of 28 August 2026). Its limit deserves to be said out loud: those scenes are procedural, not Apple's photographed landscapes. It does not replace Golden Gate — it answers a different question.

Revision note

Written on 28 August 2026 against betas 6 and 7 (`26A5416b` / `26A5421a`), revised on 23 September 2026. macOS 27.0 shipped on Monday 14 September 2026 as build `26A428`, the same as the release candidate. The `Automatic` option did not ship with it: Apple's release notes do not mention it, the registry Apple serves for macOS 27 still lacks solar coordinates, and the gist's author re-tested the workaround on 27.0 and on the first 27.2 beta. This page will be revised again if Apple publishes the registry.

## Reveal the Automatic option on macOS 27.0, as reported

1. Check your build under Apple menu > About This Mac. The gist's author lists it as tested on betas 6 to 8, on the release, macOS 27.0 (`26A428`), and on the first 27.2 developer beta (`26B5086k`). Take a Time Machine backup first, and don't do this on a machine you depend on.
2. Create the local catalogue folder: `mkdir -p "$HOME/Library/Application Support/com.apple.wallpaper/aerials/custom"`
3. Copy Apple's catalogue into it: `cp /System/Library/ExtensionKit/Extensions/WallpaperAerialsExtension.appex/Contents/Resources/entries.json ~/Library/Application\ Support/com.apple.wallpaper/aerials/custom/`
4. Add the missing metadata with `plutil`: set `combineVariants` to `true` on subcategories `0DC99DD8-3386-4D1E-8878-C43E97EB710A` (Tahoe) and `67512508-D33E-4CBC-8A9E-BE55CEE35C4C` (Golden Gate), then write `variant` = `{"solar":{"altitude":A,"azimuth":Z}}` on the eight assets `TA_L_001`, `TA_L_002`, `TA_D_001`, `TA_D_002`, `GG_A_SUNSET`, `GG_A_DAY`, `GG_A_EVENING` and `GG_A_NIGHT`, using the values from the table above. The shell helpers that automate the walk (`find_id_index`, `find_asset_index`, `enable_combining`, `set_solar_variant`) are in pdfux's gist — copy them from there rather than from a retyped version, they are too long to reproduce here.
5. Validate the file before going further: `plutil -convert json -o /dev/null "$CATALOG"`. If it returns an error, stop and fix the JSON.
6. Point the extension at your catalogue: `defaults write com.apple.wallpaper.aerial AerialManifestLocalPathOverride -string "$CATALOG"` then `defaults write com.apple.wallpaper.aerial AerialManifestForceLocal -bool true`
7. Restart the agent: `killall WallpaperAgent WallpaperAerialsExtension 2>/dev/null || true`
8. Check in System Settings > Wallpaper > Landscape: Tahoe and Golden Gate should each appear as a single thumbnail, with an `Automatic` option (likely rendered as Automatique, Automático or Automatisch in a localised build — only the English label is attested).
9. To revert everything: `defaults delete com.apple.wallpaper.aerial AerialManifestLocalPathOverride`, then `defaults delete com.apple.wallpaper.aerial AerialManifestForceLocal`, then `rm -rf -- "$HOME/Library/Application Support/com.apple.wallpaper/aerials/custom"`, then the `killall` from step 7.

macOS 13 or later, Intel and Apple Silicon — including the Macs macOS 27 leaves behind. Free tier, no account required.

## Frequently asked questions

### Why don't I see the Automatic option under Landscape wallpapers in macOS 27?

Because the data is missing, not the feature. According to the MacRumors thread, Apple removed the private feature flag and turned the behaviour on by default in beta 6, but neither the registry shipped with the betas nor the one Apple serves for the release, macOS 27.0, carries `combineVariants` or `variant.solar` metadata for the Tahoe and Golden Gate collections (checked 23 September 2026). Until Apple pushes an updated wallpaper registry with solar coordinates, the option stays hidden.

### Do macOS aerial wallpapers keep playing on the desktop, or do they stop?

They stop. Apple's wallpaper guide states that aerials “animate as you lock or unlock your Mac” and are used as your screen saver by default. Between two unlocks the desktop shows a still frame. The macOS 27 solar scheduler doesn't change that — it only decides which of the four videos plays next.

### Does sun-based wallpaper switching need Location Services turned on?

It depends on location by design: macOS computes the sun's coordinates from your location, date and time, then selects the variant closest to that position. With Location Services off, the system falls back on a point representative of your time zone, the behaviour documented by the third-party aerial-dynamic-wallpaper project. Switches still happen, just on times computed for a generic point rather than yours.

### Will macOS 27 Golden Gate run on an Intel Mac?

No. macOS Tahoe is the last version of macOS that runs on Intel-based Macs. Golden Gate requires Apple Silicon: MacBook Neo (2026), MacBook Air and MacBook Pro from 2020, iMac from 2021, Mac mini from 2020, Mac Studio from 2022, and the 2023 Mac Pro.

### How do I undo the AerialManifestForceLocal wallpaper override?

Run `defaults delete com.apple.wallpaper.aerial AerialManifestLocalPathOverride`, then `defaults delete com.apple.wallpaper.aerial AerialManifestForceLocal`, then `rm -rf -- "$HOME/Library/Application Support/com.apple.wallpaper/aerials/custom"`, and finally `killall WallpaperAgent WallpaperAerialsExtension`. Worth doing as soon as you're finished: while the override is active the catalogue is pinned to your local file, so wallpapers Apple pushes later won't reach you.

## Keep reading

[Live wallpaper for Mac →](https://macplus.pro/live-wallpaper-mac.html)

[free animated wallpaper options on macOS →](https://macplus.pro/free-animated-wallpapers-mac.html)

[what WallpaperVideoExtension does to your CPU →](https://macplus.pro/wallpapervideoextension-high-cpu-macos-tahoe.html)

[why a Mac desktop doesn't keep moving like an iPhone Lock Screen →](https://macplus.pro/live-wallpaper-like-iphone-on-mac.html)

## Sources

- [MacRumors Forums — mactracker's thread on the solar switching of the macOS 27 Landscape wallpapers (2–21 August 2026)](https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2486311/)
- [pdfux — Enable the dynamic Tahoe and Golden Gate landscape wallpapers, GitHub Gist (revised 18 September 2026)](https://gist.github.com/pdfux/5659724021e584313c00b843312e909d)
- [Apple Support — Customize the wallpaper on your Mac](https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/choose-your-desktop-picture-mchlp3013/mac)
- [MacRumors — Apple Adds More New Wallpapers in macOS Golden Gate (17 August 2026)](https://www.macrumors.com/2026/08/17/macos-golden-gate-wallpapers-beta-6/)
- [MacRumors — macOS Golden Gate: Everything We Know](https://www.macrumors.com/roundup/macos-27/)
- [The Eclectic Light Company — Apple has released macOS Golden Gate, and security updates to Tahoe 26.7, Sequoia 15.8 (14 September 2026)](https://eclecticlight.co/2026/09/14/apple-has-released-macos-golden-gate-and-security-updates-to-tahoe-26-7-sequoia-15-8/)
- [Apple Newsroom — Apple introduces macOS Mojave, with Dynamic Desktop (4 June 2018; read 16 October 2026)](https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2018/06/apple-introduces-macos-mojave/)

[← All guides](https://macplus.pro/blog.html)