Issues with Screensavers Not Working After Upgrading to MacOS 12 Monterey
Apple released the new big update to its macOS operating system in late November. However, along with the quality of life improvements and feature additions in this new version of the popular operating system, a bug snuck in initially unnoticed.
Black Wallpaper Issues
A large number of users reported an issue with their screensavers not working anymore, following the Monterey patch rollout. The screensaver bug affects the photo screensaver, as well as the functionality that handles the dynamic wallpaper, rotating through a set of images.
The issue reported by users is that once they choose a non-stock picture screensaver, all they get once the screensaver kicks in is a black screen. One peculiarity of the bug is that this is only valid for non-stock image screensavers when users select their own image to use. If you select one of the stock image screensavers provided by Apple, it works as intended.
Strangely, there are also fragmentary reports that the issue only affects iMacs but is absent on MacBooks.
Potential Temporary Fix Found
A potential temporary workaround that has been discovered and can be attempted, at least until an official patch from Apple is released. The screensaver file is found under the /System/Library/Screen Savers directory path. Installing it from this location yields no results. However, a user discovered that if that file is first moved to the desktop, then has its name changed to anything else, and is only then installed, it does show up in the Preference Pane.
The same issue also affects the dynamic wallpaper functionality, with the image always looping back to the default one used in the Monterey update.
Reports concerning the same bug were filed back when the Monterey update was still in beta and was not rolled out live to everyone, but it seems this little bug snuck through testing and made it into the release version too.
Apple support has replied to customer inquiries about the matter and has officially confirmed that the issue is being worked on, likely to be addressed in the next OS patch for macOS 12 Monterey.
