Every macOS wallpaper revisited in real life and captured on video

What you need to know

  • Every macOS wallpaper was visited in real life.
  • Photos of each location were taken.
  • The whole thing is documented on YouTube.

Have you ever wondered where your Mac's macOS wallpaper was taken? Sure, we know roughly where, but do you want to know exactly where those iconic shots were captured? YouTuber Andrew Levitt apparently did. So he set about tracking down the location of each macOS wallpaper along with photographer Taylor Gray and videographer Jacob Phillips.

The result is a 13-minute video showing their escapades as they attempted to recreate the images we've been seeing on Mac desktops for years. Each release of macOS carries the name of a location and that location is the base for the release's standard wallpaper. So far we've had Mavericks, Yosemite El Capitan, Sierra, High Sierra, and Mojave. Apple will release the latest version, macOS Catalina, soon. And each has its own wallpaper, with a location to go along with it.

The video is definitely worth your time, even if Levitt notes that they weren't able to capture identical images to those wallpapers. "We didn't go during the rights seasons or wait for the best conditions, but that wasn't what the trip was about. The trip was about the chase… and seeing these places for ourselves, he tells viewers.

This video might be the latest must-watch that we didn't know we wanted until we saw it. And as Cult of Mac notes, their journey wasn't an easy one.

Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too.

Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.