John's Background Switcher
Make your desktop beautiful
Only for Mac
$8.99
John's Background Switcher puts beautiful full-screen photos and stunning montages on your desktop. Choose the photos from your own collection on your Mac or websites like Flickr, Unsplash, Pixabay, SmugMug, Vladstudio, Immich and many more besides. You'll never know what's coming next - maybe photos from a recent holiday, landscapes from far and distant lands, pictures of small kittens or equally small dogs. If you're having a tough day, just take a look at your desktop and John's Background Switcher will get you through it!
Main features include:
• Show single photos or a variety of randomly generated beautiful montages on your desktop
• Choose photos from folders on your Mac or from the Photos app (with full support for iCloud photos)
• Rich Flickr, Unsplash, SmugMug, Pixabay, Vladstudio, Pinterest, Pexels, Wallhaven, Immich, Dropbox and OneDrive (personal) integration
• Media RSS photo feeds (so you can use a great many more photo sites)
• Multiple monitor support (show the same background all monitors, different pictures on each monitor or only on one monitor)
• Switching intervals from every 10 seconds to 7 days
• A variety of post processing effects like grayscale, sepia and desaturation
• Lots of new features in the works for future versions (plus if you'd like to see anything, let me know!)
Once set up JBS quietly runs in the background changing your desktop and stays out of your way. If you don't love it, tell me what you'd like it to do from the support link and I'll add it as soon as I can! And remember, I'm a real person called John so be nice. :)
more This app is great at what it does - changing your background on any and all displays used by your computer when you want it to. I have been a Bloom County fan since the 1980's. I have all of the strips downloaded from 2015 to the time of this writing (August 2020). I use JBS to switch through them on up to 3 displays on my mac (all desktop monitors) and 3 displays on my Windows machines (2 desktop displays and a laptop display). The app is awesome on both Windows and Mac.I'm looking forward to seeing updates for JBS for Big Sur so that I can continue using it on my Macs. Its worth the cost and a well functioning app. John is also an attentive developer and responds to issues and feature requests.
This app is great at what it does - changing your background on any and all displays used by your computer when you want it to. I have been a Bloom County fan since the 1980's. I have all of the strips downloaded from 2015 to the time of this writing (August 2020). I use JBS to switch through them on up to 3 displays on my mac (all desktop monitors) and 3 displays on my Windows machines (2 desktop displays and a laptop display). The app is awesome on both Windows and Mac.I'm looking forward to seeing updates for JBS for Big Sur so that I can continue using it on my Macs. Its worth the cost and a well functioning app. John is also an attentive developer and responds to issues and feature requests.
This app is GREAT! Simple and clear on how to use. I am just using images from my Apple Photo's and it works great. On my 21" iMac 4K, I use the "PostCard Pile" view, with pictures at 350 X 350, a "metallic" background, and a random screen overlay effect. The crisp 4K screen really makes the highres images pop! The automatic switching and random layout of the montages really keeps the background interesting (while I am browsing the WWW). Easily worth the $ to get this app. Keep up the great work John!
This app is GREAT! Simple and clear on how to use. I am just using images from my Apple Photo's and it works great. On my 21" iMac 4K, I use the "PostCard Pile" view, with pictures at 350 X 350, a "metallic" background, and a random screen overlay effect. The crisp 4K screen really makes the highres images pop! The automatic switching and random layout of the montages really keeps the background interesting (while I am browsing the WWW). Easily worth the $ to get this app. Keep up the great work John!
This is a fantastic app to make the background of your computer a continuously updated gallery of your work (or someone elses)The app just works and works well. The devleoper is quick to reply when something breaks (once in years of using it.Pulls from your own galleries on many services or others (if you have permission). Highly recommended
This is a fantastic app to make the background of your computer a continuously updated gallery of your work (or someone elses)The app just works and works well. The devleoper is quick to reply when something breaks (once in years of using it.Pulls from your own galleries on many services or others (if you have permission). Highly recommended
Thanks, I do my best! :)
I'm really glad I stumbled upon this app. Yes, it's a tad pricey, but as I understand it, it's from an independent developer. And it works great, so I'm happy. I'm loving seeing a new inspirational screenshot every half hour.My only itty-bitty complaint is that I wish there had been a mini tutorial when I opened the app for the first time. I figured it out (eventually), but for not-super-great-at-technology people like me, it would have been good to have a "click here to do this" walkthrough.
Developer Response Thanks for the review and for buying JBS! Can you drop an email to support@johnsadventures.com so I can follow up about your tutorial suggestion? I’d love to improve the first run experience to make it more clear how to use it.
I'm really glad I stumbled upon this app. Yes, it's a tad pricey, but as I understand it, it's from an independent developer. And it works great, so I'm happy. I'm loving seeing a new inspirational screenshot every half hour.My only itty-bitty complaint is that I wish there had been a mini tutorial when I opened the app for the first time. I figured it out (eventually), but for not-super-great-at-technology people like me, it would have been good to have a "click here to do this" walkthrough.
Thanks for the review and for buying JBS! Can you drop an email to support@johnsadventures.com so I can follow up about your tutorial suggestion? I’d love to improve the first run experience to make it more clear how to use it.
This version adds shortcuts for common actions, photo shuffling to prevent repeats, improves the collage speed and increases the number of tiles you can have along with improving the readability of captions on pictures. Full details below!
• Added shortcut keys for next, previous, clear, preferences and play / pause - you can change them on the Switching tab
• Added the option to shuffle through stable source photos (i.e. local pictures, Apple Photos and Immich) to avoid repeats - on the Switching tab you can either stick with random selection every time or shuffle and prioritise sources or individual photos
• Using a new text drawing method so captions on postcards and the wallpaper info should be easier to read
• Increased the maximum number of collage pictures to 40 and dramatically speeded it up
• The JBS preferences is no longer "always on top" and will show in the dock when opened
• Updated the image library to the latest version (bringing more performance improvements)
• Added support for the newly released Immich 3
If you have any problems or suggestions then don't hesitate to contact me at support@johnsadventures.com and I'll be happy to help you out!
4.6 Jul 16
Hot on the heels of 4.5 this version fixes the wrong wallpaper showing up when you change desktops and have the crossfade enabled (my bad!) as well as a crash when selecting a transparent colour in the JBS preferences.
If you have any problems or suggestions then don't hesitate to contact me at support@johnsadventures.com and I'll be happy to help you out!
4.5.1 Mar 18
This version brings a better collage, smooth crossfading transitions between wallpapers, some user interface improvements and a few much needed bug fixes. Full details below:
• The photo collage has been improved to no longer crop photos - instead of choosing a size you decide how many pictures you want on a screen
• There's now a smooth crossfade transition when the wallpaper changes (which can be switched off in the Switching preferences)
• You can now choose where to position captions on each postcard / collage tile in the Montages preferences
• New macOS 26 look and feel including menu icons
• Replaced the custom colour picker for the platform one on macOS 13 and above
• View Current Picture now works for photos chosen from the macOS Photos app
• Updated the auto-starting functionality to remove deprecated code
• Fixed postcard / polaroid pile duplicates appearing
• Fixed some pictures being incorrectly orientated in the 'View Current Picture' window
• Now requires macOS 12 and above to run
If you have any problems or suggestions then don't hesitate to contact me at support@johnsadventures.com and I'll be delighted to help you out!
4.5 Mar 5
This version brings Immich integration along with a new application icon to fit in better with all the other apps out there.
• Added Immich integration - you can choose from recent photos, albums, people and random photos
• Create a new application icon for the first time in years
• Fixed an error launching JBS on some Macs
If you have any problems or suggestions then don't hesitate to contact me at support@johnsadventures.com and I'll gladly help you out!
4.4 09/17/2025
This version contains the following changes (and I'm particularly sad about the end of Google Photos integration):
• Added 'recent photos' to the Apple Photos integration
• Removed Google Photos integration (the API shuts down March 31st unfortunately)
• Added support for JXL and Canon CR3 images
• Changed the share menu item to use the latest user interface
• Changed the code that detects an internet connection to remove deprecated functionality
If you have any problems or suggestions then don't hesitate to contact me at support@johnsadventures.com and I'll gladly help you out!
4.3 03/25/2025
This contains a fix to OneDrive integration that was broken following a change on Microsoft's end and a rare crash when using Photos as a source.
If you have any problems or suggestions then don't hesitate to contact me at support@johnsadventures.com and I'll gladly help you out!
4.2.1 10/21/2024
This update has a couple of tweaks, a minor bug fix, some performance improvements and fixes Unsplash no longer working (you now need to log in with your Unsplash account to use their photos). Full details below:
• Added the option to use Bold or Regular font on polaroids
• Now built on .NET 8.0 (it was previously .NET 7.0) so benefits from various performance improvements and bug fixes from the new major version
• Unsplash now requires you to log in with an account to use their photos, which you can do when you add / edit a set or from the Accounts tab in JBS preferences
• Made the postcard font a little larger and further from the edge
• Refactored the code parsing JSON responses from Dropbox, Google Photos, Wallhaven, OneDrive, Pexels, Pixabay, Vladstudio, Unsplash, SmugMug and Pexels to use built in libraries
• Fixed a hang when trying to choose an Unsplash collection and Unsplash is down
If you have any problems or suggestions then don't hesitate to contact me at support@johnsadventures.com and I'll gladly help you out!
4.2 08/20/2024
This version fixes a few bugs and a couple of crashes that cropped up. Let's call it a minor, stability release. If I was lazy I'd have said "bug fixes and performance improvements" but that would be too dull! The full details are below.
• Fixed a couple of crashes when changing preferences tab and closing the preferences
• Fixed an issue where missing metadata resulted in Google Photos integration ignoring some photos
• JBS now embeds all the fonts it needs following problems loading them on some systems for captions
• Fixed a hang when pasting text into a drop down list
• Some general performance improvements to the image processing
If you have any problems or suggestions then don't hesitate to contact me at support@johnsadventures.com and I'll gladly help you out!
4.1.1 06/12/2024
This version contains a fix for a random crash a few people had (sorry about that, took a while to nail it) and a couple of other performance enhancements and tweaks.
• Speeded up photo downloading in general (especially when creating a photo montage)
• macOS Photos integration now gets photos asynchronously (which will also be faster)
• Added picture titles to Dropbox photos
• You can now only choose from your own SmugMug photos (as instructed by SmugMug HQ)
• Fixed a random crash when the internet connection goes down at exactly the wrong time
• Fixed a crash when attempting to add a folder of photos
If you have any problems or suggestions then don't hesitate to contact me at support@johnsadventures.com and I'll gladly help you out!
4.1 11/30/2023
This version adds some more information to diagnose the rare crash that at least a couple of users are getting. If you're one of these people please drop an email to support@johnsadventures.com and sorry about the crash. If you're not then carry on as you were! :)
4.0.4 10/24/2023
This version fixes Photos integration being broken on macOS Catalina (D'Oh!) and adds some better error handling in a couple of edge case scenarios.
As always, if you encounter any problems or have any suggestions, please let me know at support@johnsadventures.com!
4.0.3 10/18/2023
Hot on the heels of 4.0 this version fixes a couple of annoying bugs introduced with the new image processing library (my bad!):
• Fixes some photos being shown upside down
• Postcard titles will now span multiple lines rather than being super long and tiny text
As always, if you encounter any problems or have any suggestions, please let me know at support@johnsadventures.com!
4.0.1 10/06/2023
This version uses a completely new image processing engine, adds a new blurred single picture background mode that has been much requested, improves performance and memory usage and has a few other tweaks and fixes. Full details follow:
• Added a new "Scale to fit and blur the background" picture mode - which will now be the default
• Choosing a SmugMug album now lets you browse your folders
• Sorting SmugMug albums in alphabetical order when the folders can't be shown
• macOS 10.15 and above only are now supported
• Tweaked the background patterns on snapshot scrapbooks to look better on retina displays
• Now storing Google Photos access tokens in Keychain
• Using a completely new image processing library along with being now built on .NET 7 (which you shouldn't notice but will result in lower memory and CPU usage in general)
• Fixed a bunch of deprecated API issues to ensure smooth performance on your Mac
• Various performance improvements and bug fixes too minor to detail
• Wow, that's a short list considering a ridiculous amount of work went into this version under the hood! In terms of code changes this is the biggest update since version 1.0!
As always, if you encounter any problems or have any suggestions, please let me know!
4.0 09/29/2023
This version adds Pexels support, has some useful tweaks and features and has more photos of my beloved dog Billy on the 'about' page (he passed away a year ago but his memory lives on):
• Added Pexels photos support
• Added 'Try to match full screen pictures to monitor orientation' option
• Added the option to search by a specific colour when doing an Unsplash text search
• Added support for the '.hif' file extension
• Updated Vladstudio integration to the latest version (you'll need to register with Vladstudio to use the integration)
• Updated the 'Start John's Background Switcher at login' to use the latest macOS API
• Tweaked the collage generator to cut down on the number of times portraits are cropped into landscapes and vice versa
• Fixed JBS not being able to download photos from non-ASCII Dropbox folders
• Fixed a crash when trying to view a picture and that picture thumbnail had been deleted
• Fixed a problem where using a webcam URL would not be updated on refresh
• Fixed a problem where JBS would sometimes appear to use the CPU when it was idling
As always, if you encounter any problems or have any suggestions, please let me know!
3.3 06/14/2023
This version adds support for M1 Macs, adds a new photos source (Wallhaven), improves a few of the existing sources and fixes some bugs. Have a read of the full details below:
• Added support for Apple M1 Macs (sorry it took so long!)
• Added Wallhaven integration
• Added shared album (iCloud photo album) support to Photos integration
• You can now add Google Photos shared albums (it's all about shared albums)
• Added support for multireddit feeds (just put .json on the end of the URL)
• Choose to have the wallpaper refresh when you change desktops (so they all stay the same) or only change the current desktop wallpaper when JBS switches (this was previously a hidden setting)
• Increased the collage mode maximum tile size to 1000 pixels
• Made some tweaks to Google Photos integration (including updated logos)
• Updated Dropbox integration to support refresh tokens
• Fixed a few bugs and crashes - not worth boring you with the details (like the + button looking disabled when you clicked it)!
As always, if you encounter any problems or have any suggestions, please let me know!
3.2 11/26/2021
This version contains a fix for Unsplash integration as well as a couple of additions to photo sources along with the removal of Pinterest for now. I've got a longer list of things coming up but figured since Unsplash was completely broken I'd put this update out now. The full changes are:
• You can now choose from an Unsplash user's collections
• You can now choose from your macOS Photos Favourites
• Removed Pinterest integration as their API is currently broken
• Google Photos authentication now happens in a separate browser as part of their security review
• Unsplash made a change behind the scenes that stopped JBS working - now fixed
• Fixed a crash I introduced in 3.1 when editing an Unsplash set - my bad!
As always, if you encounter any problems or have any suggestions, please let me know!
3.1.1 03/10/2021
This version contains a fix for Unsplash integration as well as a couple of additions to photo sources along with the removal of Pinterest for now. I've got a longer list of things coming up but figured since Unsplash was completely broken I'd put this update out now. The full changes are:
• You can now choose from an Unsplash user's collections
• You can now choose from your macOS Photos Favourites
• Removed Pinterest integration as their API is currently broken
• Google Photos authentication now happens in a separate browser as part of their security review
• Unsplash made a change behind the scenes that stopped JBS working - now fixed
As always, if you encounter any problems or have any suggestions, please let me know!
3.1 03/10/2021
This version contains a quick fix to provide more useful information in case JBS crashes, which it wasn't doing beforehand. So hopefully you'll never notice a thing!
As always, if you encounter any problems or have any suggestions, please let me know!
3.0.5 07/29/2020
Facebook have disabled the Instagram API JBS used and replaced it with one that requires you to be a verified business. So unfortunately I've had to remove Instagram entirely from JBS.
As always, if you encounter any problems or have any suggestions, please let me know!
3.0.4 06/30/2020
This version fixes Pinterest integration which was broken when the API changed recently. D'Oh!
As always, if you encounter any problems or have any suggestions, please let me know!
3.0.3 06/01/2020
This version adds full support for macOS 10.15, adds sub-folder searching to Dropbox and OneDrive and fixes a few bugs. The full list follows:
• Added the option to look for photos in Dropbox and OneDrive sub-folders (so you don't have to add all folders any more).
• macOS 10.15 has a full API for Photos (including iCloud Photos) so JBS now has much better integration. If you have your photos optimised (so not all downloaded on your Mac) then JBS can download them automatically. Only snag is you'll need to add your albums again as the selections can't be transferred.
• Added support for Reddit RSS search feeds.
• iPhoto is no longer supported on macOS 10.15 so if you're running JBS on 10.15 or above iPhoto will no longer appear.
• If you changed the SmugMug user to an invalid one and tried to pick and album you'd see the last users albums instead of none.
• Sometimes JBS would crash when starting after you'd shut your Mac down when JBS was saving its settings. Now JBS is much more careful about when to save so this shouldn't happen.
• If you switched virtual desktops on macOS 10.15 then JBS wouldn't keep the background in sync. Now it will.
As always, if you encounter any problems or have any suggestions, please let me know!
3.0 01/21/2020
This version adds a few features to Google Photos integration and a few tweaks here and there. The full list follows:
• Added featured collection support to Unsplash.
• Added choosing from photos 2 and 5 years ago to Google Photos.
• Added additional categories to Google Photos.
• Flickr photos can now be sorted by relevance.
• The four-picture montage will now use full sized photos so things look much better on large screens.
• You can now see your Google account email address in JBS (so you know which account is linked).
• JBS should no longer automatically use a dedicated GPU if there is one (which should stop it hogging your energy usage).
• JBS now runs on the macOS hardened runtime.
As always, if you encounter any problems or have any suggestions, please let me know!
2.8 10/09/2019
This version adds integration with Google Photo's new API, removes InterfaceLIFT (for now) and fixes a few bugs. The full list follows.
• You can now choose from recent photos, categories or albums from Google Photos thanks to the new Google Photos API. You'll need to re-authenticate first though (no way to avoid it I'm afraid).
• You can now add RSS feeds from udhwallpapers.org to JBS.
• You can disconnect from any of the web-based sources from the Accounts tab.
• When you clear the background in JBS it only clears the monitor(s) JBS is actually switching.
• Removed deprecated Unsplash featured photo functionality.
• I've had to remove InterfaceLIFT integration entirely as the site and service itself has been too unreliable (weeks long outages) for too long now. :(
• Folders in the Picture Sets tab are now sorted alphabetically.
• When JBS crashes it'll tell you it's crashed and may suggest what caused the problem if it can.
• Fixed Tumblr RSS feeds in the EU being broken.
• Artstation RSS feeds would sometimes show emojis as backgrounds - no longer!
• SmugMug wasn't choosing from ALL the photos in an album, now it is.
• Stopped a common crash when the settings file was in the process of saving the settings - if JBS crashed on you it was probably this. Sorry!
• The Accounts tab now checks your accounts every time you click it, this stops it getting out of sync if you flip between tabs while adding picture sets.
As always, if you encounter any problems or have any suggestions, please let me know!
2.7 03/27/2019
Just in time for the holidays here are a couple of bug fixes and one change:
• Instagram authentication was broken (thanks Instagram!) so now it's fixed.
• Fixed an error when trying to save some Unsplash photos.
• Unsplash now have a new logo so JBS now uses it.
• A couple of minor performance enhancements (hopefully).
As always, if you encounter any problems or have any suggestions, please let me know!
2.6.1 12/20/2018
This version is all about supporting macOS Mojave and fixing a few bugs along the way.
• JBS now fully supports macOS Mojave including dark mode.
• You can now choose from an Unsplash user's liked photos (including your own if you have an Unsplash account).
• Instagram would sometimes fail to authenticate - this has now been fixed.
• Tumblr feeds were broken in the EU and now JBS is able to parse them again.
• Fixed a bug where a change to the Vladstudio API stopped JBS from working.
• A few other minor bug fixes and performance enhancements (really).
As always, if you encounter any problems or have any suggestions, please let me know!
2.6 11/02/2018
This version adds shortcuts for common actions, photo shuffling to prevent repeats, improves the collage speed and increases the number of tiles you can have along with improving the readability of captions on pictures. Full details below!
• Added shortcut keys for next, previous, clear, preferences and play / pause - you can change them on the Switching tab
• Added the option to shuffle through stable source photos (i.e. local pictures, Apple Photos and Immich) to avoid repeats - on the Switching tab you can either stick with random selection every time or shuffle and prioritise sources or individual photos
• Using a new text drawing method so captions on postcards and the wallpaper info should be easier to read
• Increased the maximum number of collage pictures to 40 and dramatically speeded it up
• The JBS preferences is no longer "always on top" and will show in the dock when opened
• Updated the image library to the latest version (bringing more performance improvements)
• Added support for the newly released Immich 3
If you have any problems or suggestions then don't hesitate to contact me at support@johnsadventures.com and I'll be happy to help you out!
more Version 4.6 Jul 16
Data Linked to You The following data may be collected and linked to your identity:
Data Not Linked to You The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity: