Dear iScreensaver Customers,
macOS Sonoma is set to be released on 26 September.
Sonoma introduces new screensaver features, but also has quite a few bugs with existing screensavers.
Alhough we have been working with Apple to solve these issues from the early betas, as of today’s release (RC2) all of the bugs remain unfixed.
These bugs affect all third-party screensavers (screensavers that were not made by Apple) and this unfortunately includes screensavers built with iScreensaver. This is not an issue specific to iScreensaver.
For now, Apple has stated that there are no workarounds.
Therefore, our recommendation is to not upgrade your computers to macOS Sonoma 14.0, if you plan to use any third party screensavers.
If you do upgrade to Sonoma, we recommend you select one of the built-in Apple screensavers (such as Flurry, Hello, or Message) prior to upgrading and avoid using any third-party screensavers until the bugs are fixed.
If one tries to use macOS Sonoma with a third-party screensaver, it can result in several problems:
- screensavers failing to run (black screen)
- screensaver processes getting stuck in the background
- screensaver processes getting stuck, using 100% CPU
- crashes in the macOS Window Server processes.
Several of these issues can require you to restart your system.
On the positive side, we know that Apple is aware of these issues, and it is our hope that in a future version of Sonoma (perhaps 14.1 or 14.2) Apple will have fixed the bugs.