(I made a new entry into my bash profile to simplify the long command into a more memorable and simpler command, Visualize.) Press Control-C to quit the overlay, or simply close the Terminal window the command is running in, to exit the background screensaver. This sets your selected screen saver as your desktop background. System/Library/Frameworks/amework/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaverEngine -background After doing that, in Terminal, issue this command. Then open the Desktop & Screen Saver System Preferences pane, and set your newly-created screen saver as your screen saver. Then save the edited composition into the Screen Savers folder in your user's Library folder. Still in Quartz Composer, go to Editor » Edit Protocol Conformance, and click both Screen Saver and Music Visualizer. Read on for the how-to if you'd like to see how I did it.įirst, I copied a visualizer (for example, Lathe.qtz) from the Compositions folder in the /System » Library » Compositions folder, and modified it heavily in Quartz Composer (part of XCode) to make it unique. I have a Quad dual-core, so I don't notice a hit in performance, but I'd prefer this to work cleaner. As far as I can tell (by Googling the techniques that have been detailed elsewhere), this is the only start-to-finish instruction to accomplish responsive music visualization on the desktop.īefore you begin, note that the major issue with this hint is that it requires you have the visualizer running in iTunes in order for the desktop visualizer to work. I've always wanted to have a desktop image that was a live music visualizer.