As described by Dr. Drang, I experienced the white desktop wallpaper bug upon update to macOS Sequoia 15.4 today.
(Photos from Dr. Drang)
This appears to be a well-appreciated, reproducible bug affecting many people. I am surprised that this slipped through quality control at Apple. They don’t want to get tagged with the “White Screen of Blindness” (WSOB) moniker, like Microsoft got pummeled for “Blue Screen of Death” (BSOD) for so many years. I’m sure there are myriad things to keep track of in a system update, but this one is readily apparent as soon as the system reboots. To make matters worse, apparently, the bug had been reported while in beta.
Anybody else facing this bug? There are more reports being posted, but I haven’t seen any comments on this forum, so I wonder if the bug is not too prevalent. If you are not seeing the bug, double-check that (1) you are on macOS 15.4 Sequoia, and (2) try setting a custom desktop wallpaper color (not one of the default colors).
Until wonderful Apple techs are able to spare their “precious” time to fix the horrendous glaring “WSOB” issue that @cavalierex appropriately calls it, I’ve decided to pass on a quick fix that worked for me for everyone to try and save their eyes.
Find or create the solid color/pattern of your choice and have it onscreen (no need to fill the entire screen, I just had a 2x2 inch sample)
Keyboard press left Ctrl-Control-4 and select some of your sample, choose done and save it to your “photos” folder.
Go to Settings, Wallpaper, Add Photo and browse to pick the image you’ve just created.
Entire screen should populate with your new image/color.
Good enough to get going and get things done.
Com’on Apple, fix this. You guys are being paid. Has your new fangled OS system failed upon bootup no less and screwed by a wallpaper? The least you can do is lie to the masses and send out a note saying this is actually a hidden “feature”, free of charge…
