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ScreenPlay Is an Open Source Live-Wallpaper App for Windows and OS X
- Kelteseth 2y agoOh hi HN, creator of ScreenPlay here :) I'm currently working on adding wallpaper timeline support, that lets you set wallpaper based on start and end time. Also, I have been working Godot 4.3 wallpaper support. I hope I will find the time and release the 1.0 update this year!
- doener 2y agoI stumbled upon your website because of your BlueSky follow. ;)
- matteason 2y agoLooks really interesting! Video wallpapers were actually a feature in Windows past [0]. I remember some feature in XP which let you show an HTML page as a wallpaper too which I enjoyed playing with, so I'll definitely give this a go Just a heads up, a handful of your Read More links on the homepage are broken [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_DreamScene?useskin=vector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_DreamScene?useskin=vec...
- creshal 2y ago> I remember some feature in XP which let you show an HTML page as a wallpaper too Active Desktop was originally introduced for Windows 95: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Desktop https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Desktop
- giancarlostoro 2y agoI remember in KDE (3? 3.5?) you could embed HTML as your wallpaper. That was interesting.
- hnlmorg 2y agoThat feature goes back way longer. Internet Explorer 4 (Windows) with Active Desktop was the first time I’ve encountered HTML as a wallpaper. The performance was terrible on most computers of that time but you have to bear in mind we were talking about a few hundred megs of RAM being “high end”.
- giancarlostoro 2y agoInteresting, I wasn't trying to claim KDE's was older, just making an aside, that I thought it was interesting, I forgot Windows did the same too. I still remember during the XP era where I thought 40GB was revolutionary after suffering a Millenium Me 500MB hdd computer...
- hnlmorg 2y agoIt’s funny how it doesn’t matter how much resources you have, there’s always a way to fill it.
- memco 2y agoI don’t remember if Mac had HTML but I used to set one of the quartz screensavers as my desktop back in the day. I can’t find links to how to do it right now so can’t test if it still works. It could only be set using a command line so it wasn’t exactly mainstream. I found “Flurry” to have decently low battery and CPU usage but many would chew through one or the other quickly.
- user_7832 2y agoNice project, I'm keeping an eye on this! Could you comment about its resource/power consumption? It's especially helpful to know for laptop users. Small thing - the homepage has a link to https://kelteseth.gitlab.io/ScreenPlayDocs/Wallpaper/ https://kelteseth.gitlab.io/ScreenPlayDocs/Wallpaper/ but that just 404's.
- zo1 2y agoHey there - As a suggestion, cause it took me like 10mins now to find it, the alternative downloads link... Shouldn't it point to "https://gitlab.com/kelteseth/ScreenPlay/-/releases https://gitlab.com/kelteseth/ScreenPlay/-/releases" instead of your pipelines? That path requires a gitlab account, and I still couldn't find the download link even after registering.
- valenceelectron 2y agoAlso, the latest release is nearly a year old. Is this correct? There have been quite a few commits since then. However, the pipeline seems to be broken and no longer(?) produces binaries.
- ninju 2y agoFYI: Under the Features section of the homepage, the first two "Read More..." links are broken (Wallpapers and Widgets)
- runsonrum 2y agoSince you are using the Steam platform, I think there is a lot of potential for game devs, or users of games, to create themed live wallpaper.
- mentalfist 2y agoIs there a Spotify integration widget, and/or audio visualizer? Rainmeter has it, but it's a bit tricky to get to work, and may mess up sleep/hibernation modes.
- Kelteseth 2y agoI have been working on that (tm). I got the audio visualizer prototype working on Windows. And the Spotify integration should be easy. IIRC rainmeter also just checks for the current Spotify Window title to get the song name.
- swiftcoder 2y agoWhat's the battery life hit going to look like, running live wallpaper and widgets on an Apple silicon MacBook Pro?
- wdfx 2y agoIs there anything like this that works on Linux (x11) ?
- latexr 2y agoDoesn’t VLC do live wallpapers? I’m pretty sure I tried something like this over a decade ago.
- prmoustache 2y agomplayer has been doing this for a loooooong time with the -rootwin option. You quickly grow tired of this though.
- Kelteseth 2y agoYes, there is an X and Wayland wlroots (so no Gnome support ) implementation, but I have not managed to find the time to test and deploy it properly.
- zitsarethecure 2y agoFor Gnome there's the Hanabi extension. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWjXl4h9_BA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWjXl4h9_BA
- Technetium 2y agoX11 & Wayland, but KDE only: https://github.com/catsout/wallpaper-engine-kde-plugin https://github.com/catsout/wallpaper-engine-kde-plugin Wayland Only: https://github.com/GhostNaN/mpvpaper https://github.com/GhostNaN/mpvpaper X11 Only: https://github.com/jtsiomb/xlivebg https://github.com/jtsiomb/xlivebg
- whoitwas 2y agoDo these things use a lot of resources? Is the build process less painful than using Epic Games?
- justinclift 2y agoHopefully the Linux/KDE support turns out to work well (preferably on at least Debian) when it comes out. :)
- prmoustache 2y agoThis has been possible for a long time. We just don't do it because it is stupid. See -rootwin option from the mplayer man page.
- justinclift 2y agoYou're saying it does work on Linux, unlike what the repo documentation says?
- justinclift 2y agoAhhh, my misunderstanding. You're saying playing video's (eg from mplayer) as a background is the already-existing equivalent?
- ttoinou 2y agoIs there shader / GPGPU / CPU coding available :) ?
- causi 2y agoThis concept has suddenly become interesting again now that I have a bunch of OLED devices.
- kossae 2y agoSort of a related question: How many of you actually see your desktop on a daily basis? I feel like even with 3 monitors I have either tiled windows, or full-screen windows taking up the entire desktop. I oftentimes even forget what my wallpaper is.
- minkles 2y agoYeah same. Never see it. It kills me whenever I see people plastering their desktop with icons and stuff. I mean do you keep all your important stuff under a pile of papers on your physical desk?
- lawlessone 2y ago>I mean do you keep all your important stuff under a pile of papers on your physical desk? No, it's under a bottle of antacid.
- joseda-hg 2y agoI do I keep any projects/files I'm working on visible on my desk then tidy up as needed (I also have script to move files to a location based on extension, but it doesn't get executed until I checked anything that might cause problems being moved)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- eek2121 2y agoAs someone with ADHD I keep things closed unless I am actively using them. I see my wallpaper quite often, especially on the second monitor (I do use the second monitor for things like development, but only if it doesn’t distract.)
- itishappy 2y agoWork? Daily, at startup. Home? Hourly, at task switch.
- taskforcegemini 2y ago
- nerdjon 2y agoThis makes me curious, on Mac right now you can set one of their video screensaver things as your background. When you unlock this will slow down the video gracefully to a single frame, but will be playing briefly as your desktop background. So does Mac already technically have a native way to play a video as your background, it just does not give the option? I am curious if anyone has looked at what the performance hit during those few seconds of video playing when unlocking. (Also curious how this works on the backend, is the video just "paused" or is it taking a frame and setting that as the background for better performance). Is this using the built in method for this just removing the part where it slows down?
- cwizou 2y ago> So does Mac already technically have a native way to play a video as your background, it just does not give the option? Not really. It may have changed in Sequoia, but afaik in Sonoma this is how it worked : - ScreenSaver plays the video - You press a key/unlock your mac - ScreenSaver does a XPC to the new Wallpaper system with the exact timing/position of where the screensaver was - Wallpaper system starts a new video player and syncs it exactly - Your mac wakes up, screensaver is hidden (it's complicated), and the second video player starts playing and slows down - Eventually it gets replaced by a static screenshot of the last played frame seamlessly - Screensaver exits (maybe, sometimes) It's fairly complicated. > what the performance hit during those few seconds of video playing when unlocking Minimal, it's all hardware accelerated (videos are 4K/h265). > is the video just "paused" or is it taking a frame and setting that as the background for better performance It takes the last decoded frame eventually, but it's not instantaneous. There are tons of other interesting tidbits about the system, I tried to untangle it because Apple introduced some really annoying bugs in the screensaver system as they changed the way screensavers exits because of the XPC handshake, and it threw a lot of issues in Aerial and other 3rd party screensavers. Also if you use Spaces or multiple monitors, because you were able to have a different wallpaper on different Spaces/monitors, Apple now lets you set a different screensaver on each. That broke the ability to set a default screensaver which is a pain for 3rd parties. Note that the "screensaver/wallpapers" videos are 4K/240FPS (likely interpolated frames for many) just to get that smooth slowdown effect. And they backported pretty much the entire catalog of existing Aerials to that format, even if only a few are available in macOS. I do use these (the whole collection) in Aerial and for a few years I've also had a desktop version if you want to give it a try, it's in the installer. By default I use the 240FPS videos nowadays, and the desktop tool (Aerial Companion) will play those back at slow speed too by default (there are playback controls) : https://aerialscreensaver.github.io https://aerialscreensaver.github.io
- slowmotiony 2y agoCan someone comment on what is the CPU/GPU usage while this is running? Does it also take up resources when the desktop is in the background or when another window is maximized?
- traverseda 2y agoWhat are the odds of something like this eventually supporting android? My android TV is where I most want a wallpaper like this.
- Festro 2y agoWill try this out later. Always looking for an easy way to load new wallpapers once I get tired of the old one. Especially love the low-motion 'cinemagraph' style ones. My setup is a nightmare though. One 2xHD ultrawide. One Vertical 1080p monitor. One 4k Projector. So when they're all turned on I see my wallpaper fairly often and it just has to be a fairly flexible, high res image to fit all of those permutations. If ScreenPlay can handle that setup with even only a small portion of its database of wallpapers then it'll hold value to me. I know others won't have my exact setup, but I think non-standard screen setups are more common than people assume.
- Sparkenstein 2y agoI use https://github.com/rocksdanister/lively https://github.com/rocksdanister/lively BTW. pretty good and low on resources too
- marknutter 2y agoI cannot for the life of me figure out how to install live-wallpapers using this app. I hope I'm not the only one..
- pentagrama 2y agoWindows user here, exited to try this, but on the download page [1] the link to download the installer didn't work as expected to me. I don't see an exe/msi file to download here [2]. Any solution? [1] https://screen-play.app/download/ https://screen-play.app/download/ [2] https://gitlab.com/kelteseth/ScreenPlay/-/pipelines https://gitlab.com/kelteseth/ScreenPlay/-/pipelines
- the4anoni 2y agoHow does this compare to Wallpaper Engine?