Get Mac OS X Lion & iOS 5′s Grey Linen Wallpaper Tiles
The lightly shaded large linen wallpaper from the OS X Lion developer previews didn’t end up being the final shipping version, instead a linen tile came with the final release of Lion. This linen tile appears everywhere in Mac OS X 10.7 and even iOS 5, from Mission Control, to behind Safari windows, Notifications Center, LaunchPad and iOS folders, and a variety of other places.
We’ve uploaded both versions of the gray tile to this post and you can download it here, but there isn’t much reason to if you’re on a 10.7 based Mac right now because you can access them directly yourself.
Getting the Grey Linen Tile from the Mac OS X Finder:
- Hit Command+Shift+G to bring up the “Go To Folder” window
- Enter the following path:
/System/Library/Frameworks/AppKit.framework/Versions/C/Resources/ - Locate the file named “NSTexturedFullScreenBackgroundColor.png” that is the linen tile that is ubiquitous in Mac OS X Lion
The Lighter Gray Linen Tile
There’s also a lighter version of the gray linen in the same folder, named “NSLinenBackgroundPattern.png”
The linen tiles make a great wallpaper, just be sure to set it to “Tile” in the Desktop & Screen Savers preference panel, rather than stretch, or it’ll look awful.
Nope, not the most thrilling post in the world, but we’ve been asked twice in the past two days about this and it came up again on Twitter yesterday, so hey, why not make a post about it. Enjoy.
I noticed that Apple pulled all of the standard desktop tiles out of Lion, which is unfortunate because I prefer less gaudy and less distracting desktop backgrounds. These linen images are quite nice too, so thank you for the post.
Next up, how to click a button
Accurate moniker.
Do you think that an apps can be accepted with this pattern ?
Great! Thanks.
hmmm, when I put it on my imac it isn’t as nice (it is all blown out)
any ideas?
Go to System Preferences -> Desktop and Screen Savers -> And then chance the desktop setting from Full Screen (Or Fill Screen or whatever) to Tile.
That will do the trick.
Couldn’t find where to change between Full Screen and Tile in the Desktop & Screen Savers preference pane.
Just an interesting side note. The NSTexturedFullScreenBackgroundColor.png can be swapped out with a different picture in Lion for toughs of you who want to change the Login background. Just remember the picture has to be named the same file name, has to be in .png format, has to be the same size tile or the exact size of your screen resolution in order to work correctly.
Still can’t see a setting in Desktop & Screen Saver for tiling images for the desktop. Anyone know the setting for Lion 10.7.2? Thanks.
We’ve received a few questions about this so I just made a post:
http://osxdaily.com/2011/10/26/how-to-tile-desktop-background-wallpaper-in-mac-os-x-lion/
In short, you have to use a picture that is smaller than your screen resolution. These linen wallpapers work perfect for this, whereas the default images don’t. Hope that helps!
Thank you for the clear instructions!
[...] Other than changing the actual wallpaper, you can’t change Launchpad specific wallpaper, although you can change Launchpads folder background image to something other than the linen default. [...]
Thanks, that worked fine until 10.7.3. Have anybody an idea for version 10.7.3. Apple changed something.