macOS Sonoma is in beta right now, and as is the general rules for beta releasse, one should not be using it for serious work.
Sonoma 14 (beta 1, beta 2 and beta 3 as of this writing) has serious problems with third-party screensavers (including screensavers built using iScreensaver).
At the present time we do not recommend using any third-party screensavers (incliuding iScreensaver) with beta versions of macOS Sonoma 14.0. The issues are due to bugs in Apple’s software. Apple is reportedly aware of the issues, but we have not been given a timeframe for resolution.
We will track this issue here as it develops.
You can also follow a discussion regarding another third-party screensaver (Aerial) here:
https://github.com/JohnCoates/Aerial/issues/1305
In an earlier blog, it was mentioned we may not see an update compatible with macOS Sonoma until a 14.1 or a 14.2 release by Apple, and that statement appears more hopeful than an assurance it will happen. Having a company screen saver out of commission for a long period of time will probably force us to seek out other alternatives in the interim. Any suggestions or comments to put us at ease while we wait?
My concern at this stage is that there seems to be a possibility that iScreensaver will no longer work with macOS Sonoma (and greater) and that any confirmation that this is the case may take some time to come to that realization. Not having a working screen saver is a cause of stress and the cost is also a concern going forward.
Please advise, and thanks.
This is a good question, and we can give some assurances, but no promises:
- There is some recent history with Apple’s behavior on this topic: In macOS Ventura 13.3, Apple broke the functioniong of Multi-monitor screensavers. This was partially fixed by apple in 13.4, and appears to be completely fixed in 13.5 and later. This meant that users with more than one screen were not able to use their screensavers for about 2-3 months. If we assume that Apple does something similar again, our best estimate would be that this transition from 14.0 to 14.1 (or 14.2) would take about the same amount of time.
- iScreensaver.com has been around since 1995, and through that time period Apple has thrown us a lot of curveballs by breaking screensaver functionality in a number of ways (changing APIs, deprecating technologies such as OpenGL, etc.) At each step, we at iScreensaver have been able to eventually get the software working again, sometimes by working closely with Apple, and sometimes by finding engineering workarounds or changes on our end. Naturally, we can’t promise anything, but we hope that our 28+ year track record offers some reassurance.
Thank you for the reply and for providing that assurance.
Attempted to install iScreensaver with macOS 14.1 beta, same results as seen before.
