How to Turn Off the Screen Saver on a Mac (Ventura to Tahoe)

To turn off the screen saver on a Mac running macOS Tahoe, open System Settings, select Wallpaper, click Screen Saver..., and set Start Screen Saver to Never. On macOS Ventura, Sonoma and Sequoia the same menu sits in System Settings, Lock Screen, as Start Screen Saver when inactive. On Monterey and older it is in System Preferences, Desktop & Screen Saver.

We checked this on a MacBook running macOS Tahoe 26.5.2 on 2 October. Its Lock Screen page has no screen saver row any more; it lists only the two display-off timers and the password delay. The screen saver timer moved to the Screen Saver sheet under Wallpaper, which showed After 20 minutes on a Mac where nobody had changed it.

Turn off the screen saver on macOS Tahoe

• Open the Apple menu and choose System Settings.
• Select Wallpaper in the sidebar.
• Click Screen Saver... under the wallpaper preview.
• Set Start Screen Saver to Never, then click Done.

If the sheet shows a yellow note, "Display will sleep before screen saver starts. You can manage the timing in Lock Screen Settings.", your display turns off before the screen saver would start. On our test Mac the display timer on power was 10 minutes and the screen saver 20, so the note showed and the screen saver never had a chance to run. A black screen in that case comes from the display timer, covered below.

Turn off the screen saver on macOS Ventura, Sonoma and Sequoia

• Open System Settings and select Lock Screen.
• Set Start Screen Saver when inactive to Never.

Turn off the screen saver on macOS Monterey and older

• Open Apple menu, System Preferences, Desktop & Screen Saver.
• Select the Screen Saver tab.
• Set Start after (called Show screen saver after on some versions) to Never.

The other timers that darken or lock the screen

Turning off the screen saver does not keep the screen on. On macOS Tahoe, the Lock Screen page holds the timers that do that. This is what our test Mac showed in System Settings, next to what Terminal reported for the same values:

Setting	Shown in System Settings	Terminal check	Output on our Mac
Turn display off on battery when inactive	For 2 minutes	pmset -g custom (Battery Power)	displaysleep 2
Turn display off on power adapter when inactive	For 10 minutes	pmset -g custom (AC Power)	displaysleep 10
Require password after screen saver begins or display is turned off	After 5 minutes	sysadminctl -screenLock status	screenLock delay is 300 seconds
Start Screen Saver (Wallpaper sheet)	After 20 minutes	defaults -currentHost read com.apple.screensaver idleTime	key does not exist

So with the screen saver at Never, the display on this Mac still turned off after 10 minutes on power, and the Mac asked for the password 5 minutes after that. To keep the screen on, raise Turn display off in Lock Screen as well. To stop the password prompt, see keep a Mac screen from locking.

Turn off the screen saver from Terminal

The screen saver timer is stored per user and per Mac, in seconds:

defaults -currentHost read com.apple.screensaver idleTime

On our Tahoe Mac this printed The domain/default pair of (com.apple.screensaver, idleTime) does not exist. That is normal for a Mac where nobody changed the timer: the key is missing and macOS uses its default, which the Settings sheet showed as 20 minutes.

To set the timer to never, write 0:

defaults -currentHost write com.apple.screensaver idleTime -int 0
defaults -currentHost read com.apple.screensaver idleTime

The read printed 0. To go back to the default afterwards, delete the key; the read then reports that the pair does not exist again:

defaults -currentHost delete com.apple.screensaver idleTime

Open the Screen Saver... sheet afterwards to confirm the menu shows the value you want. If you only need the screen on for a while, caffeinate -d keeps the display awake until you press Ctrl+C. While it ran, pmset -g assertions listed PreventUserIdleDisplaySleep named: "caffeinate command-line tool". Every flag is in caffeinate on Mac.

Mac screen saver keeps coming on

• A Hot Corner. Moving the pointer into a corner set to Start Screen Saver starts it at once. Check System Settings, Desktop & Dock, Hot Corners, or run defaults read com.apple.dock wvous-br-corner (and -tl-, -tr-, -bl-). A corner with no action has no key. On our Mac only the bottom-right corner had one, 14, which is Quick Note; 5 is Start Screen Saver.

• A managed profile. On a work Mac, IT can enforce a screen saver time, and the menu is greyed out. profiles status -type enrollment prints MDM enrollment: Yes on a managed Mac. Ours printed No.

• It is the display turning off. A black screen with no animation is the display timer, not the screen saver. Lengthen Turn display off in Lock Screen.

• Another user account. The setting is per user. Change it while signed in as that user.

Does turning off the screen saver keep Slack or Teams active?

It removes the lock that follows the screen saver, and both apps show you away when the Mac locks. It does not create input. Microsoft Teams still turns Away after about 5 minutes without keyboard or mouse input, as covered in how to keep Teams active on a Mac. Slack still turns grey 10 minutes after your last keyboard or mouse input; the Mac options are in how to keep Slack active on a Mac.

FAQ

Where is the screen saver setting in macOS Tahoe? System Settings, Wallpaper, Screen Saver..., Start Screen Saver. It is no longer on the Lock Screen page.

Why does my Mac go black before the screen saver starts? The display-off timer in Lock Screen is shorter than the screen saver time. The Screen Saver sheet shows a yellow note when that happens.

How do I turn off the screen saver on a Windows PC? Settings, Personalization, Lock screen, Screen saver, then (None). The steps are in how to turn off the screen saver on Windows 11.