Set Mac OS X Desktop Background Wallpaper from any Image in Safari
You can set any image on the web as your Mac OS X desktops background wallpaper directly from Safari. This means you don’t even need to download the picture to your computer to set it as the desktop background, you can just find a picture on the web and immediately use it as the wallpaper on the Mac.
How to Set Any Picture from the Web as Mac Wallpaper from Safari
This is a really easy trick, all you need to to set a wallpaper directly from Safari is the following:
- In Safari, navigate to an image you wish to use as the wallpaper on the Mac (lots of great wallpaper options here)
- Right-click (or two-finger click with a trackpad) on the image you want to set as the wallpaper and select “Use Image as Desktop Picture”
- Wait a minute or two and the wallpaper image will set on the Mac to the picture you chose in Safari
That’s it! The default setting appears to be ‘Fill Screen’ so if you select an image smaller than your screen resolution it might not look that great, thus aim for high resolution wallpapers like the ones we feature.
In terms of web browsers, this feature seems to be limited only to Safari, as Chrome and Firefox don’t include the option. However, you can also right-click on any image within the Finder and set your background image there too. Or with another web browser, you could save the image to your Mac, then set it as the wallpaper within the OS X Finder too.
And if you were wondering about the screen shot, I have a black menu bar thanks to Nocturne on this older version of OS X, though those black menu bar options are now available as a default setting in modern versions of OS X like EL Capitan and Yosemite with Dark Mode. The wallpaper is Andromeda Galaxy from Lion as well, which looks quite nice on any Mac.
[…] image on the web and you are using the Safari browser, you can just right-click on that picture to “Use as Desktop Picture” – this is the easiest for pictures on the […]
this is not new to Lion
Correct, this is a general Mac OS X & Safari feature
Nobody has told it was new to Lion ;)
Well it is assumed as new since it’s posted here…
Works in Firefox and Chrome too. Didn’t test in Opera.
This is a very useful feature which makes it easy for us to set desktop backgrounds. It is also available in Firefox 4 and the menu names it as “Set As Desktop Background…”
I don’t see it in Chrome but it is definitely in Firefox. Maybe you need to upgrade.
:)
Are you kidding me? This is news? This should’ve been a feature ten years ago
Agreed, I remember doing this with Internet Explorer 3!
[…] put a similar shadow on it with Photoshop. The result is this 2000×1080 PNG file, ready to be set as your desktop […]
[…] you ever set a desktop wallpaper from Safari, only to wish you had saved the file directly so you could access it later or do something else […]