When did we get the ability to have the desktop wallpaper be the login wallpaper, without turning off FileVault?

[BeatCrazy]

Going back many years, the login screen wallpaper was always "locked" to a theme of the macOS, because you hadn't authenticated yet so the user files were locked out (at least that's what I always understood). Here's people discussing this as recently as Sept 2023: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255159522?sortBy=best

There was always a workaround, if you disabled FileVault. But it seems a recent update defaults your desktop wallpaper to your login wallpaper?

The reason I haven't noticed when this happened... I often use the default Sonoma desktop wallpaper. Yes, I'm that lame

When did this happen?

 

[dmccloud]

The ability to set separate lock screen and desktop wallpapers was first introduced in Ventura.

 

[BeatCrazy]

The ability to set separate lock screen and desktop wallpapers was first introduced in Ventura.

Interesting! Seems to be different behaviors available to Apple Silicon Macs vs. Intel, so maybe that's what I've noticed.

 

[ipaqrat]

There was a post somewhere here... Found it: Wallpaper Thing ...that observed that wallpaper files were systematically being copied as .PNG to a cache folder in some library, thereby wasting stupid amounts of storage on disk. We brainstormed it in the thread a bit (where everyone was smarter than me), but the question of WHY wasn't quite satisfactorily resolved, at least not while I was still watching that thread.

THIS here thread might suggest a reason (if not THE reason) WHY wallpaper is getting cached: So the wallpaper you pick remains available when the file store is encrypted? FileFault applies to an entire volume, not just a user profile; however, the OS would presumably be able to log into the volume with ITS private key, so I guess there'd be no access violation.

That thread posited that it happened on M-silicon with Sonoma; however, at that time I observed that behavior on my intel MBP with Sonoma.