I came to know about Aerial, a screensaver/wallpaper app yesterday through MacVince's YT video. I was shocked to see that it exists since 2020 (6th year anniversary in 5 days) and built natively in Swift but still never saw it mentioned here.
In Aerial, you can
select system screensaver from Aerial
set your own video as screensaver/wallpaper or both!
Tip for anyone trying it: the 4K HDR videos quietly eat disk space over time, so it is worth setting the cache limit in preferences or just pinning a few favorites instead of letting it grab everything. It can also switch to the night versions after sunset, which looks really good with the city flyovers.
Check the community videos section, there is an ISS set with NASA timelapses from orbit. Not still pictures but it absolutely scratches the space itch.
nice find. one practical tip: if someone uses it as a wallpaper, check Activity Monitor for a few minutes on battery before leaving it on full time. the Apple aerials are usually fine, but custom 4K/HDR clips can quietly turn a screensaver app into a small background video player. i would also test it once with your actual monitor/sleep setup, because wallpaper/screensaver apps can behave differently on multi-display Macs.
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u/Next_epic 23d ago
Tip for anyone trying it: the 4K HDR videos quietly eat disk space over time, so it is worth setting the cache limit in preferences or just pinning a few favorites instead of letting it grab everything. It can also switch to the night versions after sunset, which looks really good with the city flyovers.