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How to remove downloaded aerial wallpapers?

Mr.Mozi

Mr.Mozi

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 25, 2020
45
56
The recently introduced aerial dynamic wallpapers with macOS Sonoma are cool but the problem is that they take HUGE amount of disk space (almost 10GB). How can I remove them?

I've tried:
- Right click, ctrl click, tap and hold on the thumbnail in sys settings
- Searching the library folder for videos in HEVC or MPEG formats
- Looked up the Desktop Wallpapers folder in the Library

Still no luck...
 
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Mr.Mozi said:
The recently introduced aerial dynamic wallpapers with macOS Sonoma are cool but the problem is that they take HUGE amount of disk space (almost 10GB). How can I remove them?

I've tried:
- Right click, ctrl click, tap and hold on the thumbnail in sys settings
- Searching the library folder for videos in HEVC or MPEG formats
- Looked up the Desktop Wallpapers folder in the Library

Still no luck...
Click to expand...
I don't think you can remove system files. Maybe if you disable SIP but that's opening another can of worms
 
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I
bogdanw said:
The downloaded wallpapers are not system files, they can be deleted.

Be sure to select another wallpaper, as you can’t delete one that is in use, right-click on the one you want to delete and then choose remove download.

The support page is currently for Ventura https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/choose-your-desktop-picture-mchlp3013/mac
Click to expand...
In system settings? Right-click brings nothing up.
Might be a bug since the dynamic/light/dark settings doesn't seem to work neither
 
wern-apfel said:
You can find the HEVC videos at /Library/Application Support/com.apple.idleassetsd/Customer
It probably depends on your screen resolution, 2k 4k....
In my case /Library/Application Support/com.apple.idleassetsd/Customer/4KSDR240FPS/
Click to expand...
Thanks, that worked for me. For some reason the videos were not in 4K so I deleted them.
 
i deleted them all manually by going in /Library/Application Support/com.apple.idleassetsd

half an hour later, i see they all got redownloaded again, lol , idk what to do
 
This is crazy, Apple turned a bug into a “feature”.
In my previous comment I was mentioning the Ventura documentation:
“To delete a downloaded picture, Control-click its thumbnail, then choose Remove Download.”
https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/choose-your-desktop-picture-mchlp3013/13.0/mac/13.0
The current Sonoma documentation doesn’t mention download or how to remove a download.
https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/choose-your-desktop-wallpaper-mchlp3013/14.0/mac/14.0
So, rather than fixing a bug, Apple decided to delete a paragraph from the user guide. :)

Love-hate 🍏 relationship said:
i deleted them all manually by going in /Library/Application Support/com.apple.idleassetsd

half an hour later, i see they all got redownloaded again, lol , idk what to do
Click to expand...
I think there is an evidence of the downloaded items stored somewhere else. I don’t have time to dig deeper, but deleting all files from com.apple.idleassetsd, TVIdleScreenSnapshotLog.plist and ~/Library/Application\ Support/com.apple.wallpaper/Store/Index.plist seems to work.

From Terminal

Code: 
sudo rm -rf /Library/Application\ Support/com.apple.idleassetsd/*

sudo rm -f /Library/Application\ Support/com.apple.TVIdleScreen/TVIdleScreenSnapshotLog.plist

rm -f ~/Library/Application\ Support/com.apple.wallpaper/Store/Index.plist

and reboot.
 
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bogdanw said:
This is crazy, Apple turned a bug into a “feature”.
In my previous comment I was mentioning the Ventura documentation:
“To delete a downloaded picture, Control-click its thumbnail, then choose Remove Download.”
https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/choose-your-desktop-picture-mchlp3013/13.0/mac/13.0
The current Sonoma documentation doesn’t mention download or how to remove a download.
https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/choose-your-desktop-wallpaper-mchlp3013/14.0/mac/14.0
So, rather than fixing a bug, Apple decided to delete a paragraph from the user guide. :)


I think there is an evidence of the downloaded items stored somewhere else. I don’t have time to dig deeper, but deleting all files from com.apple.idleassetsd, TVIdleScreenSnapshotLog.plist and ~/Library/Application\ Support/com.apple.wallpaper/Store/Index.plist seems to work.

From Terminal

Code: 
sudo rm -rf /Library/Application\ Support/com.apple.idleassetsd/*

sudo rm -f /Library/Application\ Support/com.apple.TVIdleScreen/TVIdleScreenSnapshotLog.plist

rm -f ~/Library/Application\ Support/com.apple.wallpaper/Store/Index.plist

and reboot.
Click to expand...
Arggggg this did not work. The files came back after running the 3 commands and rebooting.

I wound up replacing the files with small .mov files of the same name. Seems to be working so far...
 
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