How to Install Screen Savers the Easy Way

Apple provides a variety of screen savers with macOS, but many others are available from third-party developers. Most downloadable Mac screen savers are smart; they know how to install themselves. When you finish downloading a screen saver, you can install it automatically with just a few clicks.

How to Install Screen Savers Manually

If your encounter a screen saver that doesn’t install automatically, you can manually install it. Drag the downloaded screen saver to one of two locations:

/Library/Screen Savers/: Screen savers stored here can be used by any user account on your Mac. A pathname beginning with / indicates the file is stored on your startup drive, starting at the root entry point. Open your startup drive, look for the Library folder, then locate the Screen Savers folder. Drag your downloaded screen saver into this folder. ~/Library/Screen Savers/: Screen savers stored in this location can only be used by the current user account. The tilde (~) character at the front of the pathname represents your personal home directory. For example, if your home directory is named tom, the pathname would be /Users/tom/Library/Screen Savers/. The tilde is just a shortcut to your currently logged-in user home directory. Put screen savers in this folder to make them only available only to the current user.

How to Delete a Screen Saver

Should you ever want to remove a screen saver, go back to the appropriate Library > Screen Savers folder and drag the screen saver to the Trash icon in the Dock. Sometimes identifying which screen saver is which by its file name can be difficult. In some versions of the macOS operating system, there’s a simple way to delete a screen saver.