Odd icons superimposed on screen saver

On my MacBookPro, I have the screen saver set to my Pictures folder. When an image comes up, there will occasionally and randomly be superimposed over the top of the image what looks like a bitmapped icon. It will be a flag, or a red circle with a white plus sign in the middle. I can't figure out where this is coming from. It's not in the images themselves. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks for your help.

My only guess is that it's an iPhoto glitch. Sorry if it's too broad, but hey, nobody else has answered yet!

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Slide Show Screen Saver Superimposed Images Flag or Ball -- Bug?

Hi,
I have searched and found two other archived questions on this topic, but no real answers. Please help!
I have the screen saver set to do a slide show from the Pictures folder, where I have lots of family photos. This works fine, but about every 10th photo or so, it shows the picture, and the next image is the same photo, with a weird low-res ("jagged edges"), blown-up (full-screen), icon-like image in the middle, superimposed upon my image. It's usually circular, often has a national flag or comic scheme to it, sometimes has a face, and always has effects to make it look round like a ball, which it usually is in shape (though sometimes it's not circular). When I look, my images have not been altered recently and don't seem affected, so the problem seems to reside in the system, right?
I'm not a techie but I have used Mac since 1985 and remember reading several years back in one of the Mac mags about such a problem -- whether termed a trojan or whatever. I do have all my old Mac data and apps in a folder on my mini, so it's possible it could have been pulled over from my last Mac and a remnant of some prior vulnerability. But I've never seen this behavior before OSX, neither Norton nor ClamXav finds a problem, and I can't seem to find ref to that article by net searching or here. What causes this, and how can I solve it? It really bothers my mother-in-law to see pix of her grandkids with weird flags superimposed on them, and I'm wondering if this is some Mac problem with more serious consequences not yet discovered by Norton or ClamXav. Thanks.
P.S. Here's the text of one of the archived messages:
Screen saver
Posted: Oct 3, 2006 11:24 AM
Whenever the slide show runs from my pictures out of iphoto on my screen saver, other pictures appear occasionally on top of my pictures. They are usually other country flags or weird shapes with jagged edges. Any idea how to keep this from happening or where these other pictures are coming from? Thanks.
Mini Mac OS X (10.4.8)

The problem is not with the screensaver but rather that the Pictures folder insists on having the iChat flags alias inside it. Since the screensaver recognizes aliases I have moved all my photos out of the "Pictures" folder and into another folder called "Pictures not screensaver". This is because the screensaver will show ALL pictures in the Pictures folder regardless of how embarassing they are. That leaves the Pictures folder for just aliases to pictures or folders of pictures. This allows me to control exactly what pictures are shown on the screensaver. It is an area of OSX that needs some improvement.
Regarding the superimposed images, that is normal. Those iChat icons are transparent, while JPGs are not transparent. Screensaver piles newer pictures on top of older pictures. If it piles transparent images such an GIF or PNG on top of previous pictures they may be transparent and cause an alarming effect.
I have imagined this feature could be used in some cool way but have never seen anyone do it. For example, nice JPG backgrounds with semi-transparent PNGs on top with zooming animals. I suspect Apple will introduce such a screensaver in 10.5.

Mysterious screen saver images... & odd Leopard flaky-ness in general

Hi Guys,
I have my screen saver set to "pictures folder" as I always have, but now and then a picture will repeat if I happen to be around the mac at the time, with strange zoomed in cartoon type images of fruits, and union jacks and little characters etc superimposed over the images.
I have no idea where these are coming from or how to turn them on or off, anyone else seen the same? They worry me slightly ha! Try it and see!
I have noticed a great degree of flaky-ness in Leopard which I didn't get with Tiger 10.4.11. Tiger was rock solid for me, but I have had several crashes and strange things happen to me. If I try to verify a disk in disk utility it hangs up in definitely; the log sayd it completed the verify, but its like the app hung up. I believe this might be related to me having a bootcamp partition though.
I have had itunes crash a few times also, and had the keyboard act oddly, as if it wasn't fully initialised (the num lock and caps lock LEDs are on and the command key doesn't do anything; a reboot sorts it) - I had a similar thing with the build in isight with Tiger after creating a bootcamp partition and running windows. It seems fine if I go back to my Tiger volume.
I'm starting to wonder if bootcamp leaves the mac hardware in an odd state after you boot up in windows, it seems to be the case for me.
cheers
David

I found the shortcut to iPhoto in my pics folder, worry over! Although I can't select "mosaic" for any screen saver - it just crashes system prefs, every time.

Accidently deleted the "desktop and screen saver" icon

Hi,
I accidently deleted the desktop and screen saver icon from the system preferences. I deleted it from the trash too, is there anything I can do to get it back?
Thanks

laur.son wrote:
Hi,
I accidently deleted the desktop and screen saver icon from the system preferences. I deleted it from the trash too, is there anything I can do to get it back?
Thanks
Welcome to Apple Discussions:
Exactly how did you delete it?
Not knowing what computer or OS you are using, it's not possible to provide any help. We need more info and a filled-in profile.
You can always restore the system from your backup.

All can see on my desktop is the screen saver, no folders and no icons/docks can anybody help?

all i can see on my desktop is the screen saver, no folders, icons / dock it happened after cleaning the laptop and may have pressed random things on the keyboard when wiping over them, any suggestions? Thanks!

Hi again,
The problem may be corrupted preferences. If it persists, use the Finder's Go dropdown menu at top of screen and select Go to folder. Input ~/Library/Preferences and move these files to the Trash.
com.apple.finder.plist
com.apple.desktop.plist
Restart the computer.

Odd system prefs: screen saver behavior

I don't understand why, but it seems that now most of the albums in my screen saver pane do not load correctly. Some load with correct photos and photos from other albums. Others only read as having the same two photos. What is going on?
iBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Triple-click anywhere in the line below to select it:
grep -R idisk ~/L*/Preferences
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C).
Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.
Paste (command-V) into the Terminal window.
The command may take a noticeable amount of time to run. Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign (“$”) to appear.
Post any lines of output that appear below what you entered — the text, please, not a screenshot.
If any personal information appears in the output, anonymize before posting, but don’t remove the context.

My Macbook starts up, shows the screen saver, then immediately goes to sleep. I tap the spacebar, it comes back for a second, shows the tool bar and the hard drive icon then immediately "goes to sleep". This can go on forever, on, sleep, on, sleep.

My Macbook starts up, shows the screen saver, then immediately goes to sleep. I tap the spacebar, it comes back for a second, shows the tool bar and the hard drive icon then immediately "goes to sleep". This can go on forever, on, sleep, on, sleep. I can only see the screen for maybe 3-5 seconds; not enough time to do anything. Someone did step on it, so I don't know if the problem is with screen or ??
Thanks!

Hello, Juniorjr2.
Thank you for visiting Apple Support Communities.
This sounds like screen curtain may be enabled. Screen curtain is a feature that allows display privacy. To disable screen curtain while VoiceOver is enabled, you can three finger triple tap the screen to disable this feature. You may need to press the home button once in order to process these steps. If you wish to disable VoiceOver, see the link in the article below.
iOS: Configuring accessibility features
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5018
If the issue persists, try reaching out to us here.
Cheers,
Jason H.

My Ipad (4?) screen went black but I can hear it. I tried hitting both the sstart button and sleep button for 10 seconds and the apple icon comes up, my screen saver shows for 1 second and it returns to black screen again. I can hear SIRI. How do I fix?

I had been using the IPAD and all of a sudden it started talking back to me and when swiping apps to close them they would not close. She (the IPAD) kept talking back to me such as "use three fingers" etc. Then the screen went blank and if I touched it I could get it to beep at various touch points. SIRI would also communicate, but the screen stayed black.
As was suggested here, I tried getting a reboot by holding the sleep key with the home key and after 10 seconds the apple logo shows and 5 seconds later my screen saver comes on for just one second, and then it goes back to a black screen. SIRI tells me shes not available and someone else, must be her sister, says things like 90%, 85%, 80% if I continually swipe the screen. Can anyone help me?

Hello, Juniorjr2.
Thank you for visiting Apple Support Communities.
This sounds like screen curtain may be enabled. Screen curtain is a feature that allows display privacy. To disable screen curtain while VoiceOver is enabled, you can three finger triple tap the screen to disable this feature. You may need to press the home button once in order to process these steps. If you wish to disable VoiceOver, see the link in the article below.
iOS: Configuring accessibility features
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5018
If the issue persists, try reaching out to us here.
Cheers,
Jason H.

Odd Screen Saver Behavior

Usually, my iMac goes to sleep without a problem. Recently, I've noticed that my screen saver kicks in randomly from time-to-time. Having never even realized it had a screen saver, I was more than a bit surprised. I've now looked at its settings in System Prefs, which indicates that the screen saver should not kick in because the computer will go to sleep more quickly than the screen saver will start up. So now I'm totally confused -- that being the case, why does the screen saver ever kick in? Any and all thoughts appreciated.
Thanks!

It might be that you have an active corner enabled. Look in your System Preferences > Exposé & Spaces > Exposé Tab

System preference freezes on screen saver icon

system preferences freezes when trying to use desktopand scree saver

Back up all data. Quit System Preferences if it's running.
Triple-click the line below on this page to select it, then copy the text to the Clipboard (command-C):
~/Library/Preferences/ByHost
In the Finder, select
Go ▹ Go to Folder...
from the menu bar. Paste into the box that opens (command-V), then press return. A folder should open. If it does, look for a file with a long name that begins "com.apple.screensaver". There may be two such files. Move the onewithout the word "slideshow" in the name to the Trash.
Test. If the problem is resolved. recreate your settings in the Screen Saver tab.

Can't activate password-protected screen saver

I use my MacBook for sensitive data, so I always make sure to "lock" my screen with a password-protected screen saver when I walk away from my desk. Normally, there are several ways to do this:
1. Wait for the screen saver to come on due to inactivity.
2. Set a "hot corner" for the screen saver and move the mouse to that corner.
3. Enable the keychain menu bar icon and choose "Lock Screen" from the menu bar. (This is my preferred method.)
Under normal conditions, any of these three methods will activate the screen saver.
However, sometimes when I've been running my computer for a while (several days) without rebooting, all three of these methods simultaneously *stop working*. The "lock screen" menu option does nothing, the screen saver hot corner does nothing, and the computer fails to activate the screen saver on its own after the predefined period of inactivity.
Oddly, I can still activate the screen saver by using the "Test" button in the screen saver preferences pane, but in that case it's not password protected, so that doesn't help.
A reboot solves the problem, but this usually happens when I have a bunch of stuff open and it's not a convenient time to reboot. Plus, after a reboot, the problem still recurs a few days later.
I'm not the only one with this problem. Many others have reported the same behavior:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6124716
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1391053
A few of those users found workarounds, but they seemed to be experiencing something different from what I'm describing here. Those who were describing the same symptoms I am still don't seem to have found a solution.
Incidentally, I am not running Spaces or Parallels, nor am I using an external monitor, all of which have been suspected in other threads as the culprit. Quitting all open apps doesn't seem to help either.
The issue seems to be limited to one account at a time; if I switch into another account while having this problem, the other account won't have problems starting its screen saver, but switching back doesn't resolve the issue for the first account. A reboot does.
Can anyone shed some light on this or offer another workaround? Or is this just an ongoing bug?

This happened to me again the other day. Any suggestions?

Screen saver includes wiered pictures?

About every 10th picture or so on my screen saver includes a wiered colorful graphic on top of the photo. Its never in the same spot and covers about 20% of the photo. Its random and oddly the graphics lool like flags or gems. When I view the same photo in iphot the graphic is not on the photo. Any ideas if this is some sort of virus?

Turns out the wierd pictures are actually iChat Icons from the folder /Library/Application Support/ Apple/iChat Icons. How the heck does that happen when I have identified iPhoto as my source for the screen saver?

Screen Saver and Dock and Mail all not working properly

I'm helping my husband troubleshoot some issues he is having. His machine is a new (couple of months) Mac Pro Quad Intel with 10.6.2.
He has never been able to get the ScreenSaver to 'see' iPhotos. iPhotos completely quit launching today and I did everything I read on the boards, finally settling on deleting and reinstalling from the Snow Leopard disk. It works fine, but Screensaver still does not see it. I have deleted, the com.apple.screensaver caches and anything in preferences that had to do with screensaver including the plist. I restarted the machine and it made no difference, other than the hot corners finally started working.
It won't keep certain applications in the dock. Like Word. They disappear every time the machine is restarted. As above.. I have deleted the com.apple.doc.db and com.apple.dock.plist to no avail.
This just started today as well... When the mail has when the program has been Quit, with every 30 minutes set in the mail preferences, it will launch, every 30 minutes. The dock icon will bounce and Mail will ask for the password so it can check for new mail. But the program was not open for it to be checking for mail. Oddly, something like this is also happening on his old G5 sitting in the other room. The only thing common to them is they are on the same network and pulling email from the same ISP account. Though the G5 is no longer scheduled to actively get new mail at any time, it is for some reason self-launching. I have no idea why my mail was open on that machine when I saw it this afternoon, but there it was.
It is a lot of issues. He has been having issues since he got the machine and gets one resolved and then discovers another one. But the Dock and ScreenSaver he has never been able to resolve, Mail is a new issue. He has re-installed Snow Leopard 10.6.2 twice thinking something had become corrupted, I am using the same OS X on my machine and having no issues, I can see no difference in the settings. If I can't get some ideas from y'all here then I guess I am going to have to go to tech support because it seems to be one weird thing after another.

Even in big sky country, people must know where the Desktop resides. It's what's on the screen when all windows are closed. Thus, move the om.apple.screensaver.XXXXX.plist file in the ByHost subfolder out of there and put it on the Desktop. The next statement: +*System Preferences->Desktop & Screen Saver->and iPhoto should be available.*+ means open System Preferences, select the Desktop & Screen Saver prefPane (preference pane) and in the listing should appear iPhoto. It does on my machine. If not, then restart and see if the iPhoto folder appears in that prefPane.

IMac to Apple TV 2nd gen music distortion with screen saver on.

I have an ATV2, mid 2010 iMac dual core i3, Airport Extreme 3rd generation router.
After Wednesday's update to Apple TV to implement the new user interface, I get distorted playback when initiating music playback from iTunes on the iMac as soon as the screen saver starts. It sounds like the old vinyl records when the needle skips. It isn't, oddly enough, timed with the screen changes. It occurs at ever increasing frequency, from 24 to 19 to 16 seconds.
If however, you access the iMac through the Apple TV interface, the screen saver start up does not create any interference. It doesn't matter whether the music is started using the Apple remote control or the iPhone 4S interface. Both work fine.
So it's a one way situation. When you start playing music from iTunes on the iMac, interference and distortion start with the screen saver, but if you start playing music from the Apple TV, there is no distortion or interference from the screen saver.
Any one else have this problem and a solution?

Based on an Apple Care suggestion, the solution to this problem is to reset the Apple TV completely. This is under Settings- General- Reset-Restore.
Restore will erase previous versions of the Apple TV software and will download and install a current clean version. You do have to re-enter all your configuration settings, such as wireless network password and your iTunes Account.
A little bit time consuming but it eliminated the problem.

Annoying: Mail app opens randomly after screen saver login

Hi
I have my security settings setup so that everytime my iMac goes into screen saver mode it asks for login password. Recently I have noticed that if I leave the computer unattended for a long period of time (a few hours) and come back, the mail app opens up. If I just go away for a few minutes and come back the problem does not occur.
Since I am not using the mail app and have not set it up, the setup account window is the one to come up.
I have checked the Login Items under Accounts in System Preferences and it's not there. I have also right clicked the icon in the dock and checked if it was set to start up automatically - it isn't.
I have read online this maybe has something to do with email alerts from iCal but I have not set up iCal to send email, nor do I know where I can disable that type of feature. This is happening even when iCal is closed and I have no events for that day. I've looked around in the prefrences of iCal and disabled any option that has something to do with email but it still happens.
The next logical step was to check Activity Monitor to try and see what started a process. You see I am originally a Windows user and have recently converted my OS religion. Back in Windows when something like this happened I had many tools that could tell me what started the application and even it's command line. But with the Mac all i have is the activity monitor and I'm still not familiar. I have clicked the process and then inspect, the parent process indicated launchd, pressing that lead me to another inspector window still without much info.
How can I solve this, it is becoming rather annoying?
Also does anyone know a better process monitor for mac? or how to use top on the terminal to get the information I need?
Please help a confused new mac user!
Thanks

So I've tried both of the tips you gave my guys, but non of them works
But I've found out something. When I switch to different space (in spaces), than drop some file and then try to switch back to my mail space, there are 2 possibilities how to do it. First - I just move mouse to the space to where I want to switch, wait for a second and it switch automatically or I can move mouse to the space where I want to switch and than press spacebar to make it faster.
The strange thing with opening app from dock happens just when I press the spacebar.
And question for your other answer - yes, it happens just with apps in my dock.
It is so uncomfortable...
EDIT: few days ago I've run OnyX (which was probably mistake) and this happens probably since than. I used it because Snow Leopard got little bit slower so I wanted to clean it... It might be because of that.
Message was edited by: jakudo

Odd icons superimposed on screen saver

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