3D Earth – Support
Live 3D Earth wallpaper for macOS 13+ and Windows 10/11 · by Ax-Easy
Getting started on Mac
- 3D Earth lives in the menu bar: click the globe icon at the top right of the screen. It has no Dock icon.
- The Earth is drawn behind your desktop icons and windows. To see it, hide your windows or use Show Desktop (F11, or spread your thumb and three fingers on the trackpad).
- Settings… (⌘,) has presets at the top and tabs for the view, surface, motion, weather, sky and performance.
- Explore shows the globe full screen: drag to rotate, scroll or +/− to zoom, Esc to go back.
- Open at login is in the menu and in Settings → Performance.
Common questions
I don’t see the Earth. Check that it isn’t paused (menu → Pause). Try menu → Troubleshooting → Re-attach to the desktop. With several Spaces or displays, the wallpaper appears on every display unless Settings → Performance → Show on is set to “Main display only”.
The clouds look old or missing. Menu → Update weather now. The cloud map is refreshed every 3 hours by its source; the app checks every 30 minutes. Without internet the app uses its built-in textures.
Battery and performance. The wallpaper pauses when covered by windows, when the screen is locked or asleep, and (by default) on battery. Lower the frame rate or quality in Settings → Performance for even less energy use.
Where are my settings? Settings → Export… saves them to a file; Import… loads them (also files exported from the Windows version).
Updates. The Mac App Store version is updated by the App Store.
Uninstall. Quit from the menu (Stop wallpaper & quit) and move 3D Earth to the Trash.
Privacy
3D Earth collects no personal data. See the privacy policy.
Credits
Data and imagery: NASA (Blue Marble, Earth at Night), NOAA National Hurricane Center, GDACS, live cloud maps by Matt Eason (contains modified EUMETSAT data), Solar System Scope (CC BY 4.0), ESO/S. Brunier (CC BY 4.0), d3-celestial star data (BSD). Software: three.js (MIT), Astronomy Engine by Don Cross (MIT).
