John's Background Switcher for Mac
Put full-screen photos and montages on your desktop.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission
John's Background Switcher overview
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, Google Photos 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!
Features
- Show single photos or a variety of randomly generated beautiful montages on your desktop
- Choose photos from folders on your Mac, from iPhoto (old skool) or the new Photos app
- Rich Flickr, Unsplash, SmugMug, Pixabay, Vladstudio, Pinterest, Dropbox, OneDrive (personal) and Google Photos 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 (I have a list as long as your arm!)
Once set up JBS quietly runs in the background changing your desktop and stays out of your way. And 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!
What’s new in version 4.1.1
- 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.
John's Background Switcher for Mac
$8.99
In English
Version 4.1.1
Write a detailed review about John's Background Switcher
(5 Reviews of John's Background Switcher)
Comments
User Ratings
Jul 1 2019
Version: 2.7
J'sBS is an excellent background switcher and the support is superior!
For a long time I've used ChangeDesktop but it got quirky and seems to be gone from MU all together.. I wish I had found d this app several years ago as it works great.
I submitted several questions late on a Friday via this developers www site. He responded within hours and then we exchanged 4 or 5 emails over the weekend. That's great support, IMO.. J'sBS has a very clean GUI and offers features beyond my needs that others will find useful.
As I could not find this here or on his www site one answer I'll share: this is a 64-bit application and ready for the future. Thank you John!
Nov 2 2015
Version: 1.3
Is there a version of this software that will run on OSX 10.6.8 Snow Leopard?
My primary goal is to set the timing of desktop image changes to 15 seconds, or 20 seconds, or 30 seconds . . . and the interface doesn't provide me with that level of control.
Jun 22 2015
Version: 1.3
This is fantastic. I've been waiting for this as I watched Change Desktop wither on the vine. I'm a photographer, and I like to view my "Images I might publish" folder, exported out of lightroom as jpgs. The important thing is that I need to be able to know the filename of the image, so I can find it. This app does that in an unobtrusive way. It looks good, it works, and it doesn't trigger the GPU when I'm not on the monitor (as Change Desktop did). Very happy.
Oct 21 2014
Version: 1.0
I love this app! I used Change Desktop for years but the developer stopped updating it in 2011 and it's getting more and more problematic with each new system release. I have tried time and again to use Desktop and Screensaver in Preferences but have always quit in frustration because it wouldn't let me manage my desktop the way I want to. JBS gives me exactly the options I want and it works flawlessly. I paid the $10 and I can't be happier. I've written the developer with questions and he is very responsive.
NB: I'm not using a lot of the fancy options that JBS offers. My needs are pretty simple, but Desktop and Screensaver doesn't accommodate them the way that JBS does.
Oct 20 2014
Version: 1.0
Why can't you just go to System Preference then go to Desktop & Screen Saver then select change picture every... ???
Spend ten bucks: How do i know this works with a no try before you buy ???