In my previous articles (part 1, part 2) I described how Apple built dynamic wallpapers in macOS 10.14. In the latest macOS beta (beta 5) Apple introduced some small improvements in that area. First of all you can notice changes in desktop settings screen.

Now when we chose dynamic wallpaper we can choose how system will display it. We have three options: dynamic (wallpaper will change during whole day), light (system will display only one, light picture) and dark (system will display only one, dark picture).

For that purpose Apple changed also plist metadata in HEIC file in dynamic wallpaper. Now Mojave wallpaper contains metadata like on below snippet:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">

<plist version="1.0">

<dict>

<key>ap</key>

<dict>

<key>d</key>

<integer>15</integer>

<key>l</key>

<integer>0</integer>

</dict>

<key>si</key>

<array>

<dict>

<key>a</key>

<real>-0.34275283875350282</real>

<key>i</key>

<integer>0</integer>

<key>z</key>

<real>270.9334057827345</real>

</dict>

...

<dict>

<key>a</key>

<real>-38.04743388682423</real>

<key>i</key>

<integer>15</integer>

<key>z</key>

<real>53.509085812513092</real>

</dict>

</array>

</dict>

</plist>

Thus Apple removed o parameter from si array. We have also new section: ap (this section is optional). In that section we have two parameters:

l — index of picture for light static wallpaper

— index of picture for light static wallpaper d — index of picture for dark static wallpaper

Also Apple introduced new dynamic wallpaper: Solar gradients: