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Frequently Asked Questions

Table of Contents

1. How to Install Aerial
2. How to Change Aerial's Settings
3. Aerial Companion
4. Videos Not Playing
• Play Only Favorites
• Play Only Categories
• Video Caching
5. Managing Cache Size
• Manual Cache Management
• Automatic Cache Management
6. Selecting a Video Format
• Changing Video Format
7. Downloading Your Rotation
8. Understanding tvOS Versions in Aerial
9. Time Settings
• Use Current Location
• Use Night Shift
• Manually Specify Sunrise/Sunset Times
• Use Light/Dark Mode
• Do Not Adapt Videos
10. Installation Errors/Firewalls
11. Issues with Little Snitch and Network Monitors
12. Reset Aerial Settings
13. Uninstall Aerial
• macOS Big Sur
• macOS Catalina
• Pre-macOS Catalina
14. More Technical Questions

How to Install Aerial

If this is your first time on GitHub or you are new to this, we reccomend the following steps:

1. Navigate to the latest release
2. Select AerialCompanion.dmg Disregard the remaining files/assets
3. Navigate to your Downloads folder (or wherever you chose to save AerialCompanion.dmg)
4. Double click on AerialCompanion.dmg
5. It will momentarily pause to open the DMG file.
6. You will then see a window that prompts you to drag Aerial Companion.app to the Applications folder. Plese drag and drop as shown below:




7. Now double click on the Applications folder that you just dragged the icon to.
8. Find and double click on Aerial.app
9. This will launch and install Aerial. You will notice a small circle in your menubar (at the top of your screen)
10. Lastly, go to the menubar, click on the Aerial icon and select Open screen saver settings...


11. Click on the "Screen Saver" tab at the top of System Preferences
12. And select Aerial on the left hand side.
13. You're all set! If you want to change your settings, simply click on on the right hand side.
14. You can now eject and delete AerialCompanion.dmg

How to Change Aerial's Settings

1. Open System Preferences
2. Click on Desktop & Screen Saver in System Preferneces


3. Scroll down until you see "Aerial" in the left hand panel
4. Click on Screen Saver Options

5. Now you are ready to manage your Aerial settings!

Understanding and Using Aerial Companion

Aerial Companion was introduced with Aerial 2.0. It's an independent application that allows for additional functionality for Aerial. Built entirely in Swift, the program is agile and doesn't hog a significant amount of memory while performing vital tasks. If you installed Aerial directly from GitHub, you may not have Aerial Companion, but if you installed it through the instructions above, you likely do.

The main benefit of using Aerial Companion is that it allows for automatic updates of Aerial in the background. To enable this, please follow the steps below.

1. After installing Aerial Companion, launch Aerial.app from your Applications folder
2. You will notice a menubar icon appear at the top of your screen. Click on the icon.
3. Set your Desired Version as either the current stable release or beta releases (if you like taking a risk!). At times, these version numbers may be the same if there's no public beta available.

4. Set your update mode as Automatic to enable automatic updates. You can also choose to be notified about new updates, but this will require you to use Aerial Companion more frequently.

5. Set Aerial Companion to check for updates every Hour, day, or Week. For the best experience it is reccomended that you set this to check for updates every day.



If you want Aerial Companion to automatically check for updates and automatically install them, it is not important for Aerial Companion to be visible in your menubar. Instead you can have it run in the background.
6. To run in the background choose Launch and then select In the background (no menu).

Videos Not Playing

If you have a selection of videos you want to play, but they aren't playing check the following:

• Have you selected the videos you want to play?
• Have you cached the videos you want to play?

Have you selected the videos you want to play?

You can do this in two different ways. Either favorite the videos and then choose to play only your favorites, or limit the selection of videos that you play.

To play only favorites:

1. Open Aerial in System Preferences
2. Favorite the videos you want to play.
• You can favorite an entire selection by right clicking on the left hand panel



3. Click on the tab in the sidebar (at the top)
4. At the top of System Preferences, click on the dropdown next to and select Only Favorites.

To play a single category of videos:

1. Open Aerial in System Preferences
2. Click on the tab in the sidebar (at the top)
3. At the top of System Preferences, click on the dropdown next to and select Location, Time, Scene, or Source then select the proper sub-section to play.

Have I Cached the Correct Videos?

1. Open Aerial in System Preferences
2. Click on the tab in the sidebar (at the top)
3. Click Download rotation on the top right (or right click on Currently playing in the sidebar and click Cache missing videos

Managing Cache Size

Aerial can cache videos in two different ways:

• Manually
• Automatically

When caching is set to manual you will need to download and manage your cache entirely manually. When set to automatic, you can set the size of your cache and Aerial will fill it with the videos you love!

Manual Cache Management

1. Open Aerial in System Preferences
2. Click on the settings tab (gear at the top of the sidebar)
3. Click on Cache on the sidebar
4. Uncheck Automatically download videos


5. Now download any videos you want to cache manually.
6. Note that this may take up a significant amount of disk space. To delete or prune your cache, click the Show in Finder button and delete any videos you no longer want.

Automatic Cache Management

1. Open Aerial in System Preferences
2. Click on the settings tab (gear at the top of the sidebar)
3. Click on Cache on the sidebar
4. Check Automatically download videos


5. Set your cache limit size - This is the MAXIMUM size you want your cache. If you don't want to set a maximum, move the slider all the way to the right.
6. Select how often you want to rotate your videos in your cache

NOTE: If you have fewer videos selected than your cache size limit, videos will not rotate. If your cache is larger than your limit, then over the course of the selected time period your cache will be automatically pruned until you are under your cache limit and then videos will periodically rotate).

Selecting a Video Format

The short answer is:

• Aerial will select what it believes is the best choice for your machine by default
• If you have an older Mac (2011-2014) you should use 1080p H.264.
• If your Mac is 2015-2017 consider use of 1080p HEVC.
• If you have a newer Mac (Late 2017-present) you can consider using 1080p HEVC, HDR, or, if you have more than 8GB of RAM you can give 4K a shot!
• If you have the Pro Display XDR, 4K HDR is reccomended.
• If you find that videos are "stuttering" or "lagging" decrease your video quality.

NOTE: 4K HDR requires the most intensive processing and requires a HDR compatible monitor and a reccomended minimum of 8GB of RAM.

If you'd still like to learn more, we have written about it more extensively in the dropdown below.

How to Change Your Video:

1. If you have previously downloaded/cached videos please open Aerial Settings and click on "Advanced" in the sidebar. Click on


2. Inside this folder, click on the Cache folder
3. Keep the folder, but delete all content inside. Then empty your trash.
4. Go to Aerial > Settings > Advanced
5. Select your preferred video format


6. Close and relaunch System Preferences.
7. Open Aerial Settings again and select the videos you want. Then download (cache) these videos and they will download in the selected format.

Downloading Your Rotation

The Download Rotation button is visible under the tab on the left.

Videos in Aerial only play when they are cached on your computer. This allows them to play while you are not connected to the internet and always play immediately when your screen saver starts.

To download (cache) an entire rotation:

1. Click on the tab in the sidebar (at the top)
2. Click the Download Rotation button on the top right

3. In the event that you want to download videos from a specific category (for example if you want to select only certain videos to play) you can additionally right click on any category and select "Cache missing videos"

NOTE: If this option is not available, it is because you have already downloaded these videos!

tvOS Versions

All the videos are still available in Aerial, don't worry!

Aerial 2.0 takes advantage of the latest available videos from tvOS. tvOS 11 and 12 are not shown as tvOS 13 actually contains these videos!

tvOS 10 videos support 1080p quality while tvOS 13 can support 4K and 4K HDR videos. You can still play videos from tvOS 13 in 1080p as well.

Time Settings

Aerial has the ability to adapt the videos that are played to the time of day in the categories of:

• Morning/Sunrise
• Daytime
• Evening/Sunset
• Nighttime

The option to adapt your own videos is entirely optional but can be based on a variety of different settings on your Mac as seen below:

Use My Location

Use my location is the reccomended setting here. Aerial does not collect your location data but instead uses macOS Location Services to determine an approximate latitude and longitude in order to set Sunrise and Sunset times to be exact to the second.

Use macOS Night Shift

Another option is to use your existing Night Shift settings to adapt videos. If you have customized your Night Shift settings this may be a good option to adapt your videos as night shift is enabled or disabled.

Manually Specify Sunrise and Sunset Times

If you want to take advantage of adapted videos but without Night Shift, Light/Dark Mode, or Location Services, you can isntead set a specific time for Sunrise and Sunset and the videos will adapt based on that pre-set time

Adapt Videos Based on Light/Dark Mode

If you already have Light/Dark Mode enabled to switch automatically, this will allow the videos to be shown based on your Light or Dark Mode settings.

Do Not Adapt Videos

If you do not wish to adapt videos based on your settings or location, this option will disable this feature.

You can also choose to alternatively manually set Light or Dark Mode and only show the nighttime videos in Dark Mode so as not to be too bright!

Installation Errors/Corporate VPNs and Firewalls

Under specific circumstances it is possible for installation to fail due to a variety of reasons. We have received reports that certain antivirus applications, corporate firewalls, and corporate VPNs can block Aerial from installaing or functioning properly. Errors such as the one below (...That were never supposed to be seen) may be a sign that this is the issue.

Currently, the only workaround under these circumstances is to disable the corporate VPN/Firewall. If this is not possible, we recommend checking back later to see if a workaround has been implemented into Aerial.

Issues with Little Snitch and Network Monitors

Little Snitch and other network monitors can create similar issues to Corporate VPNs or Firewalls. If you have a network monitor a variety of issues may arise. You can try and troubleshoot these issues:

• Community Videos Don't Appear or Load
• Weather or Color Icons Not Visible

Reset Aerial's Settings

To fully reset Aerial's settings back to default:

1. Open Aerial Settings in System Preferences
2. Click on the Settings Tab
3. Click on Advanced in the sidebar
WARNING: The next stop cannot be undone


4. Click
5. Once clicked, you will see the following popup and your settings will be reset

6. You must quit and restart System Preferences for this to take effect
7. On your next launch you will be prompted to set up your settings for Aerial

Uninstall Aerial

Uninstallation of Aerial depends on your current macOS version and how you installed. Please click the relevant macOS version or installation method below to learn how to uninstall Aerial.

More Technical Questions

This FAQ was made largely to help those who are new to Aerial and GitHub. If you have more technical questions you need answered, please visit our Additional Documentation available here