How to set Wallpaper on macOS devices

Customizing the desktop wallpaper is often considered an approach to promoting corporate branding on managed devices. The Wallpaper configurations for macOS devices effectively ensure that each corporate-owned device depicts their enterprise trademark. The administrators are privileged to set up the organizational logo or any other image of their choice to reflect it across a fleet of devices. Using this customization, you can choose to apply wallpaper on every user on the device and determine whether it should be changed periodically.

Setting up Desktop Wallpaper

1. Log in to the Hexnode console.
2. Navigate to Policies > New Policy.
3. Provide a policy name and description.
4. Go to macOS > Configurations > Wallpaper and click Configure.
5. You can either specify the folder/path on the target devices or choose images from the portal.
   • Select Add Folders/Files to add folders or image files existing on the target devices. It helps you choose a wallpaper image that resides on the user endpoints. Here, you have to specify the path where the image file exists on the device.
   • Select Add Images to choose images uploaded in the portal. You can also upload an image directly from the administrator’s device. Click on the Choose file to add the image, followed by the Upload button.

   You may add one or more images to a policy simultaneously. Also, you have the provision to drag the files in the list to determine the order.

6. Click Configure .
7. After determining the image source, you may configure the following options also.
   • Image position: This setting helps you specify how the image should be arranged on the device. You have the following options, Fill screen, Fit to screen, Stretch to fill screen, and Center. This option is available only on macOS 10.13+ devices.
     
     Note:

     
     Upon policy association, check for the image position on a target device to determine how the picture looks. Try various positions for a given image until you find the finest. 
     

   • Apply wallpaper to all users: Enabling this option applies the policy to all the users on the device, i.e., the wallpaper configuration is reflected across each user on the Mac.
   • Change picture: Suppose you have chosen 5 different images. Then, the device cycles through each image in the folder/list in a sequential order to change the wallpaper image periodically. You can choose how often the picture should be changed. The available options in the decreasing order of restriction are is Never, When logging in (default), When waking from sleep, Every 5 seconds, Every minute, Every 5 minute, Every 15 minute, Every 30 minute, Every hour, Every day.
   • Choose wallpaper randomly: With this option, you may choose to apply the images randomly from the given list rather than cycling through the sequential order.

Associate the policy with target entities

If you haven’t saved the policy,

1. Navigate to Policy Targets.
2. Select the required Devices, Users, Device Groups, User Groups or Domains.
3. Click on Save.

If you have already saved the policy,

1. Navigate to Policies > My Policies and select the required policy.
2. Click on Manage > Associate Targets.
3. Select the required Devices, Users, Device Groups, User Groups or Domains.
4. Click on Associate.

What happens at the device end?

Once the policy is applied, the desktop image on the device changes concerning the wallpaper configurations specified in the policy.

The Hexnode MDM app creates a folder consisting of the active wallpaper images associated with the device. (Users/Shared/HexnodeMDM/Wallpaper/Active Wallpapers). It comprises every image applied via policy.