MacOS – Why does Mountain Lion keep using the wrong screen saver

macosscreensaver

I have my screen saver set to Arabesque. If I move my mouse down to the Screen Saver hot corner, I get Arabesque. If I sit and wait for the screen saver to start automatically, I get Arabesque.

But if I leave my computer for any length of time and come back to it, it's almost always on Message, putting the name of my Mac up for everyone to see. I dislike this behavior. If I go to System Preferences after this happens, it's still on Arabesque, it's just ignoring the setting.

What's going on? Is there any way to fix it?

Best Answer

If your computer is locked, the screensaver settings for the root user account is used instead of your own. You can change those settings according to the answer to this question: How can I set the Mac OS X screensaver when not logged in?

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MacOS – Lock & Unlock the screen via WLAN – Keyboard

You may be able to work something together in automator but I am not too familiar with that app.

I would check and see if you have wake for network access on. In System Preferences->Energy Saver there is a checkbox to "wake for network access". If that is unchecked it is unlikely your computer will respond since I believe that app is based on Networking

[UPDATE]: Doing a quick search it appears other users are experiencing this issue with synergy and lion. take a look here

MacOS – Activating screen saver from AppleScript in Mountain Lion

That is a nice way of starting a random screen saver. If, however, you'd simply like to start the active screen saver, you can use this in Mountain Lion:

tell application "System Events" 
    start current screen saver
end tell

Best Answer

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MacOS – Lock & Unlock the screen via WLAN – Keyboard

MacOS – Activating screen saver from AppleScript in Mountain Lion

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