How to decorate your Mac desktop for Christmas

By Kshitij Koranne, 24 October 2026

Most of us put the tree up at home and leave the screen we stare at all day exactly as it was. Here are a few easy ways to bring a bit of Christmas to your Mac desktop, from a single photo to snow settling on a string of your own pictures.

1. Set a Christmas photo as your wallpaper

The simplest option and it's built in. Open the Apple menu, choose System Settings, click Wallpaper, then Add Photo and pick a picture. You can also select a photo in the Photos app, click Share and choose Set Wallpaper.

A photo of your own tree, lit up in the evening, beats a stock image. Take it straight on and leave some calm space around the lights so your desktop icons stay easy to read.

The catch: it disappears as soon as you open a window, and you have to remember to change it back in January.

2. Make a December album for the Photos widget

On macOS Sonoma and later, widgets can sit on the desktop. Make an album called "Christmas" with last year's family photo, the cards you were sent and the dinner table before everyone sat down. Then Control-click the desktop, choose Edit Widgets, drag the Photos widget out and point it at that album.

The catch: it's a single photo in a small box, and the look of it isn't up to you.

3. Hang photos on a string and let it snow

Picture-Line is the app I make. It hangs your photos on a string across the top of your desktop, behind your windows. With the $4.99 unlock, it dresses the string for Christmas by itself from 18 December to 1 January: stars between your photos, and snow that settles on the string while you're around and falls off if you jostle it with your pointer.

If you'd like the snow earlier, open Picture-Line's Settings, go to Moments, and choose Christmas stars and snow under Festivals. Switch it back to Automatic afterwards and it will take care of the dates.

Who goes on it is the nice part. Clip up the people you'll see this year and the ones you won't, and write a line on the back of each: who it is, where it was taken, what was funny. It's a good way to feel a bit closer to people who are far away at Christmas.

The string is free for up to five photos. Festival decorations are part of the unlock.

A few small tips

• Pick warm, close-up photos. Faces and candlelight read well when they are small.
• Include something silly. A pet in a paper hat gives the eye a place to land.
• Hide the string before a video call. If you're sharing your screen at a work call in December, choose Hide String from the Picture-Line menu bar icon first.
• Mind your Mac's motion settings. If Reduce Motion is switched on in System Settings, Picture-Line keeps the string still and skips the snow.