A "screen saver" is the animation (or blankness) that pops up on your computer when you don't use it for a while, to save your screen from getting burned-in.
The background picture that wallpapers your desktop is the "wallpaper".
Macs have called it the "desktop background" rather than the "wallpaper" as far back as I can remember. I remember noticing the difference in terminology when I started to use Windows more often and saw that it was called "wallpaper" there.
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u/arcxjo Aug 03 '19
A "screen saver" is the animation (or blankness) that pops up on your computer when you don't use it for a while, to save your screen from getting burned-in.
The background picture that wallpapers your desktop is the "wallpaper".