Is a developer of desktop and server virtualization software. Released on June 15, 2006, it was the first software product to bring mainstream virtualization to Macintosh computers utilizing the Apple–Intel architecture (earlier software products ran PC software in an emulated environment). Its name initially was 'Parallels Workstation for Mac OS X', which. Jul 27, 2012 MAC OS X Lion / Mountain Lion does not save your wallpaper on the native HDD, rather tries to load the wallpaper from the original HDD, i guess only the path to the wallpaper is saved in the OS X settings. Jul 26, 2018 A look back at Apple’s greatest wallpapers. Although the oldest images date back around 30 years, the archive was assembled by 18-year-old Evgenii Bogun, an art and design student in Moscow.
App Icon
10.0 Cheetah & 10.1 Puma. The first two releases of Mac OS X shared the same wallpaper.
Beautiful app icons are an important part of the user experience on all Apple platforms. A unique, memorable icon evokes your app and can help people recognize it at a glance on the desktop, in Finder, and in the Dock. Polished, expressive icons can also hint at an app’s personality and even its overall level of quality.
In macOS 11, app icons share a common set of visual attributes, including the rounded-rectangle shape, front-facing perspective, level position, and uniform drop shadow. Rooted in the macOS 11 design language, these attributes showcase the lifelike rendering style people expect in macOS while presenting a harmonious user experience. To download templates that specify the correct shape and drop shadow, see Apple Design Resources.
IMPORTANT When you update your app for macOS 11, use your new app icon design to replace the icon you designed for earlier versions. You can’t include two different app icons for one app, and the macOS 11 app icon style looks fine on a Mac running Catalina or earlier.
Design a beautiful icon that clearly represents your app. Combine an engaging design with an artistic interpretation of your app’s purpose that people can instantly understand.
Embrace simplicity. Find a concept or element that captures the essence of your app and express it in a simple, unique way, adding details only when doing so enhances meaning. Too many details can be hard to discern and can make the icon appear muddy, especially at smaller sizes.
Establish a single focus point. A single, centered point of interest captures the user’s attention and helps them recognize your app at a glance. Presenting multiple focus points can obscure the icon’s message.
To give people a familiar and consistent experience, prefer a design that works well across multiple platforms. If your app runs on other platforms, use a similar image for all app icons while rendering them in the style that’s appropriate for each platform. For example, in iOS and watchOS, the Mail app icon depicts the white envelope in a streamlined, graphical style; in macOS 11, the envelope includes depth and detail that communicate a realistic weight and texture.
macOS 11
Consider depicting a familiar tool to communicate what people use your app to do. To give context to your app’s purpose, you can use the icon background to portray the tool’s environment or the items it affects. For example, the TextEdit icon pairs a mechanical pencil with a sheet of lined paper to suggest a utilitarian writing experience. After you create a detailed, realistic image of a tool, it often works well to let it float just above the background and extend slightly past the icon boundaries. If you do this, make sure the tool remains visually unified with the background and doesn’t overwhelm the rounded-rectangle shape.
Make real objects look real. If you depict real objects in your app icon, make them look like they’re made of physical materials and have actual mass. Replicate the characteristics of substances like fabric, glass, paper, and metal to convey an object’s weight and feel. For example, the Xcode app icon features a hammer that looks like it has a steel head and polymer grip.
If text is essential for communicating your app’s purpose, consider creating a graphic abstraction of it. Actual text in an icon can be difficult to read and doesn’t support accessibility or localization. To give the impression of text without implying that people should zoom in to read it, you can create a graphic texture that suggests it.
To depict photos or parts of your app’s UI, create idealized images that emphasize the features you want people to notice. Photos are often full of details that obscure the main content when viewed at small sizes. If you want to use a photo in your icon, pick one with strongly contrasting values that make the main subject stand out. Remove unimportant details that make primary lines and shapes fuzzy or indistinct. If your app has a UI that people recognize, avoid simply replicating standard UI elements or using a screenshot in your icon. Instead, consider designing a graphic that echoes the UI and expresses the personality of your app.
Don’t use replicas of Apple hardware products. Apple products are copyrighted and can’t be reproduced in your icons or images. Avoid displaying replicas of devices, because hardware designs tend to change frequently and can make your icon look dated.
Use the drop shadow in the icon-design template. The template includes the system-defined drop shadow that helps your app icon coordinate with other macOS 11 icons.
Consider using interior shadows and highlights to add definition and realism. For example, the Mail app icon uses both shadows and highlights to give the envelope authenticity and to suggest that the flap is slightly open. In icons that include a tool that floats above a background — such as TextEdit or Xcode — interior shadows can strengthen the perception of depth and make the tool look real. Shadows and highlights should suggest a light source that faces the icon, positioned just above center and tilted slightly downward.
Avoid defining contours that suggest a shape other than a rounded rectangle. In rare cases, you might want to fine-tune the basic app icon shape, but doing so risks creating an icon that looks like it doesn’t belong in macOS 11. If you must alter the shape, prefer subtle adjustments that continue to express a rounded rectangle silhouette.
Consider adding a slight glow just inside the edges of your icon. If your app icon includes a dark reflective surface, like glass or metal, add an inner glow to make the icon stand out and prevent it from appearing to dissolve into dark backgrounds.
Keep primary content within the icon grid bounding box; keep all content within the outer bounding box. If an icon’s primary content extends beyond the icon grid bounding box, it tends to look out of place. If you overlay a tool on your icon, it works well to align the tool’s top edge with the outer bounding box and its bottom edge with the inner bounding box, as shown below.
In addition to the bounding boxes and suggested tool placement, the icon design template provides a grid to help you position items within an icon. You can also use the icon grid to ensure that centered inner elements like circles use a size that’s consistent with other icons in the system.
App Icon Attributes
All app icons should use the following specifications.
| Attribute | Value |
|---|---|
| Format | PNG |
| Color space | Display P3 (wide-gamut color), sRGB (color), or Gray Gamma 2.2 (grayscale) |
| Layers | Flattened with transparency as appropriate |
| Resolution | @1x and @2x (see Image Size and Resolution) |
| Shape | Square with no rounded corners |
Don’t provide app icons in ICNS or JPEG format. The ICNS format doesn’t support features like wide color gamut or deliver the performance and efficiency you get when you use asset catalogs. JPEG doesn’t support transparency through alpha channels, and its compression can blur or distort an icon’s images. For best results, add deinterlaced PNG files to the app icon fields of your Xcode project’s asset catalog.
App Icon Sizes
Your app icon is displayed in many places, including in Finder, the Dock, Launchpad, and the App Store. To ensure that your app icon looks great everywhere people see it, provide it in the following sizes:
- 512x512 pt (512x512 px @1x, 1024x1024 px @2x)
- 256x256 pt (256x256 px @1x, 512x512 px @2x)
- 128x128 pt (128x128 px @1x, 256x256 px @2x)
- 32x32 pt (32x32 px @1x, 64x64 px @2x)
- 16x16 pt (16x16 px @1x, 32x32 px @2x)
Maintain visual consistency in all icon sizes. As icon size decreases, fine details become muddy and hard to distinguish. At the smallest sizes, it’s important to remove unnecessary features and exaggerate primary features to help the content remain clear. As you simplify icons that are visually smaller, don’t let them appear drastically different from their larger counterparts. Strive to make subtle variations that ensure the icon remains visually consistent when displayed in different environments. For example, if people drag your icon between displays with different resolutions, the icon’s appearance shouldn’t suddenly change.
The 512x512 pt Safari app icon (on the left) uses a circle of tick marks to indicate degrees; the 16x16 pt version of the icon (on the right) doesn’t include this detail.
Do you want to change Mac OS X El Capitan desktop background? Are really bored of the same wallpaper on your Mac device? These are some common question that everyone ask in their daily use of Mac operating system. In this article, I’m going to show you the complete guide regarding Mac OS X El Capitan desktop background or the other version of Mac OS. If you are accustomed to the Windows 10 or another version of Windows, so you can easily change Mac OS X El Capitan desktop background with all the other features.
Change Mac OS X El Capitan Desktop Background
Mac Os Download For Windows
Changing Mac OS X El Capitan desktop background is like changing Windows 10 desktop background but with some differences. If you would be habitual to the Windows environment, so this task is very easy and useful for you. Because the way is somehow various. The other thing is the same. Anyway, to change Mac OS X El Capitan desktop background, you need to turn on your Mac first. Go to the top corner hand-side of the screen. Tap on the “Apple icon” then choose “System Preferences“.
Mac System Preferences
A new window will pop up for you and click on the “Desktop & Screen Saver“. From here, you can change Mac OS X El Capitan desktop background or the later version of Mac operating system.
You have to options to select “Desktop and Screen Saver“. In this article, I’m going to show the first step “Changing Mac OS X El Capitan wallpaper” and the screen saver option we will cover it in our upcoming article. As well here, you have three options.
- Desktop Pictures
- Solid Colors
- Custom Wallpapers
#1. Desktop Pictures
When you click on the desktop pictures folder at the left-hand side. All the Mac OS X El Capitan ready wallpaper will be shown to you. Just select anyone that you like and set to the Mac desktop as wallpaper.
#2. Solid Colors
If you don’t like the wallpaper to be set on your Mac OS X El Capitan desktop, so again there is a way to choose the solid color. Most of the famous companies while recording video tutorials. They use the solid color on their device screen. Because this looks pretty awesome and everything looks so smooth. To select a solid color background for the Mac OS X El Capitan, simply click on the solid colors then choose an appropriate color for the desktop background.
Choose Solid Color background
You also have to option to select a custom solid color. If you would not like the default Mac OS solid color, tap on the “Custom Color“. Now, choose the color that you like it the most.
#3. Custom Wallpapers
Desktop Images For Mac Os X 10.7
Again there is a way to choose a different image or wallpaper for your Mac desktop background. Download the best wallpaper and locate it to the desktop or any other places on your Mac hard disk. Click on the folder just below solid color and tap on plus ( + ) sign at the bottom. A new window will pop up to choose the custom wallpapers for your Mac.
From the bottom, you can see two options. You can tick mark “Change picture every 30 minutes or anytime you can select”. If you check the random order, the picture will change automatically one by one in order.
changing Mac OS X El Capitan Wallpaper
I hope that you have understood something from this step by step guide on how to change Mac OS desktop background and as well as how to choose custom Mac OS desktop background. If you have any question regarding this article, feel free to share it through the comment below this post. Thanks for being with us.