Getting animated wallpapers

Coming from Windows and looking for a replacement to Wallpaper Engine? I can recommend a couple of options; some of which are tied to specific desktop environments.

• Hidamari is desktop environment agnostic, pretty easy to install, supports setting video files, web videos/streams and web pages as your wallpaper, and is quite configurable.

  However, it leaks memory over time, has a tendency to hide the desktop when no other windows are open, and in general seems less maintained than the alternatives.

• Hanabi is GNOME-specific and requires a more involved installation, only supports setting video files as wallpaper, and may or may not work on your system without significant issues.

  However, it does provide better integration with the GNOME shell (e.g. the wallpaper is animated even in the overview). The activity bar bug only occurs sometimes and can easily be fixed by just switching workspaces.

• Wallpaper Engine for Kde is KDE-specific. It makes use of Wallpaper Engine files outright, so if you already have Wallpaper Engine on Steam, you can use this.

  There's a couple caveats, however. Not all wallpapers will be rendered correctly; some will even crash the desktop shell. Configuration is also non-existent, with only the very basics being available. Still, the ability to use wallpapers from the steam workshop without having to convert them to video first is convenient - so if you're on KDE, give it a try.

• mpvpaper only works for wlroots-based compositors, such as Sway. It requires a bit of setup as all it does is spawn mpv to render a video as wallpaper, but otherwise it works mostly without issues (it does slowly leak memory much like Hidamari, but restarting it is nearly seamless and does not break anything).

Using Hidamari

Hidamari is pretty easy to install as it is available from the FlatHub:

flatpak install flathub io.github.jeffshee.Hidamari

Simply open the application; setting up a wallpaper is pretty straightforward.

Using Hanabi

The installation of Hanabi is more involved as it works as a GNOME extension rather than an application.

Installing

1. Install git, meson and optionally clapper (severely improves the performance of Hanabi):

   sudo xbps-install git meson clapper

2. Clone the gnome-ext-hanabi repo to a sensible location (you'll be keeping it around):

   git clone https://github.com/jeffshee/gnome-ext-hanabi

3. Change directory to the repository root and execute the install script:

   cd gnome-ext-hanabi && ./run.sh install

You will have to restart GNOME to see the extension and thus enable it.

Uninstalling

If at any point you wish to remove Hanabi after having installed it, simply disable the extension - then enter the repository root and run:

./run.sh uninstall

Using Wallpaper Engine for Kde

Installing

First off, you will need Steam and Wallpaper Engine to be able to download wallpapers at all; see Installing Steam. To install Wallpaper Engine, you will have to turn on "Enable Steam Play for all other titles" within Steam Settings > Compatibility.

Secondly, while "Wallpaper Engine for Kde" can be installed from the store, it will lack the ability to render scene wallpapers, which means you'll only get access to video ones. If this is okay with you, you can just use the store version.

If rendering scene wallpapers is desired, you'll have to build it from source. The Wallpaper Engine for Kde repository has the build instructions, including the list of packages that need to be installed on Void Linux.

Configuring

Once you've installed it, simply open System Settings > Wallpaper and set the "Wallpaper type" to "Wallpaper Engine for Kde".

You will have to select your library location:

• If you installed steam as per Installing Steam, your library will be at ~/.local/share/Steam
• If you installed steam via flatpak, your library will be at ~/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam/.local/share/Steam

If you did everything correctly, you should now be able to see and set wallpapers you've installed through the steam workshop.

Fixing crashes

If you've managed to select a wallpaper that crashes your shell, you can restore it as follows:

1. Use ALT + SPACE to open the runner, then type "konsole" and press enter.

2. Open file ~/.config/plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc with a text editor, and look for a line starting with WallpaperSource; remove said line.

3. Start the shell again using the following command:

   kstart plasmashell

Using mpvpaper

Simply install it from the void repositories:

sudo xbps-install mpvpaper

To set a video wallpaper, ensure no other wallpaper application (such as swaybg) is active, then run:

mpvpaper -o "no-audio loop" ALL /path/to/video

The -o flag is used to pass options to mpv. ALL can be replaced with the name of a display to set a wallpaper per display. Note that to set a new wallpaper, you will want to kill the original instance first. The following script can do it for you:

# Kill existing instances.
while pidof mpvpaper; do
    kill $(pidof mpvpaper)
done

# Spawn anew.
mpvpaper -o "no-audio loop" ALL /path/to/video

Save it somewhere and, assuming you're on Sway, just add an exec_always for it. You could also run the script on a timer to prevent the memory leak from becoming too much of an issue.

Finding wallpapers

ℹ️ If you're using Wallpaper Engine for Kde this section is not relevant to you.

By far, the easiest wallpapers to use are those in the form of video files. You can find these in many places in the internet; see mylivewallpapers.com for example.

If you have Wallpaper Engine on Steam, you can extract video and web wallpapers you've subscribed to from its steam workshop folder:

1. Open Steam (assuming you've already installed it; see Installing Steam), then go to Settings > Compatibility and check Enable Steam Play for all other titles. You will have to restart Steam.

2. Install Wallpaper Engine (don't bother running it; it won't).

3. Download wallpapers as you usually would from the Steam Workshop. All items you subscribe to will go to one of the following locations:

   • .local/share/Steam/steamapps/workshop/content/431960 if Steam was installed via package manager.

   • ~/.var/app/com.valvesoftware.Steam/.local/share/Steam/steamapps/workshop/content/431960 if Steam was installed via flatpak.

   Make sure the wallpaper you download is in video or web form.

4. For Hidamari, copy the videos to your ~/Videos/Hidamari folder. Other wallpaper applications can just select them directly, but you may still prefer to copy them somewhere accessible.

   If your wallpaper is in web form, you'll have to locally host the files. You can do this easily with Python by running the following command in the directory containing the files:

   python -m 'http.server' 1337 --bind '127.0.0.1'

   Then setting the website URL in Hidamari to http://localhost:1337 (you can replace 1337 with whatever port you want).