Live Wallpaper

A lightweight MP4 video live wallpaper for Windows and Linux, built in Rust.

It plays a video on the desktop wallpaper itself (behind your desktop icons) using libmpv embedded into a native background window, and is controlled from a system-tray icon. It is designed to be light on CPU/GPU: it smartly pauses when the desktop is hidden (fullscreen games, maximized windows), supports hardware decode, optional decode downscaling, and a frosted-glass blur while the desktop is covered.

Features

• Desktop-native playback behind desktop icons
• Tray icon controller: pick a video, fit mode, renderer, downscale, hardware decode, volume, audio, monitor mode (primary / all monitors), click-through, and more
• Smart pause: video pauses when a fullscreen app or maximized window covers the desktop and resumes when the desktop is shown again
• Optional smooth blur ("frosted glass") while the desktop is hidden
• Pause on battery power (laptops)
• Multiple renderers: Direct3D 11 (Windows) / OpenGL (Linux)
• Single instance: launching a second copy shows a message instead of running twice
• Runtime error reporting: unsupported/corrupt videos, audio-only files and stuck playback are logged and surfaced as a tray error
• Per-video resume: playback position is saved and restored on relaunch

Supported Platforms

Platform	Status	Build Method
Windows 10 / 11	✅ Supported	cargo build --release
Linux (most distros)	✅ Supported	cargo build --release (see BUILD.md)
macOS Big Sur 11+	✅ Supported	cargo build --release (see BUILD.md)

Windows Build

cargo build --release

Keep these DLLs next to live-wallpaper.exe (from dist/):

• libmpv-2.dll — required
• VCRUNTIME140.dll — required
• libEGL.dll, libGLESv2.dll — ANGLE renderer
• vulkan-1.dll — Vulkan renderer

See the original README features list below for full Windows usage details.

Linux Build

Linux distros use different C library versions, so there is no single prebuilt binary that runs on all of them. Each user builds from source on their own machine.

See BUILD.md for step-by-step instructions for:

• Debian / Ubuntu / Mint / Pop!_OS
• Fedora / RHEL / AlmaLinux / Rocky Linux
• Arch Linux / Manjaro
• openSUSE

After building, run:

./target/release/live-wallpaper

Config is saved to ~/.config/live-wallpaper/config.json (XDG standard).

Configuration

Windows

Config lives in %APPDATA%\LiveWallpaper\config.json.

Linux

Config lives in ~/.config/live-wallpaper/config.json.

macOS

Config lives in ~/Library/Application Support/LiveWallpaper/config.json.

Key	Type	Default	Meaning
video	string?	null	Path to the video file
audio	bool	true	Play the video's audio
volume	int	100	Volume 0-100
monitor_mode	string	"primary"	"primary" or "all"
autostart	bool	false	Start with Windows / Linux desktop
click_through	bool	true	Clicks pass through the wallpaper
fit	string	"fill"	"fill"/"fit"/"center"/"stretch"
renderer	string	"d3d11" (Win) / "gpu" (Linux)	"d3d11"/"vulkan"/"angle" / "gpu"/"vulkan"
lite	bool	false	Low GPU/RAM mode (30 fps cap)
smart_pause	bool	true	Pause when desktop is covered
dim_when_hidden	bool	true	Blur wallpaper while desktop is hidden
pause_on_battery	bool	true	Pause on battery power (laptops)
downscale	string	"off"	"off"/"720p"/"540p"
vsync	bool	true	Sync playback to the display refresh
hwdec	string	"auto"	Hardware decode mode

Playback position is stored in position.json next to config.json so a relaunch resumes where you left off.

Supported Video Formats

Playback is done by mpv (libmpv), so anything FFmpeg can decode works. Common examples:

Container	Extensions	Typical codecs
MP4	.mp4, .m4v	H.264, H.265/HEVC, AV1
MKV	.mkv	H.264, H.265/HEVC, VP9, AV1
WebM	.webm	VP8, VP9, AV1
AVI	.avi	MPEG-4, MJPEG
MOV	.mov	H.264, ProRes, H.265
WMV	.wmv, .asf	WMV2/3, VC-1
MPEG	.mpg, .mpeg, .ts, .m2ts	MPEG-1/2, H.264, HEVC
FLV	.flv	H.264, VP6, Sorenson
GIF	.gif	(animated GIF)

For live wallpaper use, MP4/H.264 or HEVC at the monitor's native resolution is the sweet spot (small files, hardware-accelerated decode, smooth looping).

License

MIT