Lively Wallpaper Guide: Free Dynamic Desktops for Windows 10 & 11

Lively Wallpaper is a free, open-source animated desktop utility released under the GPL-v3 license. Compatible with Windows 10 (build 1809 and higher) and Windows 11, the application utilizes WinUI 3 and the Windows App SDK. This ensures the interface feels like a native component of the modern Windows 11 design language.

Screensaver Support Any wallpaper can be configured to function as a screensaver. This feature works across multiple monitors, ensuring a consistent look across your entire workspace.

External Control Lively supports command-line arguments, allowing users to control the software through scripts. This makes it possible to integrate the application with external tools like Python or AutoHotKey.

Developer API A robust API provides developers with access to hardware sensor data, audio visualizers, and music metadata. These tools enable the creation of highly reactive and interactive wallpapers.

Machine Learning The system is capable of running local inference, allowing users to generate or modify wallpapers using machine learning models directly on their hardware.

Performance Tuning

• Wallpaper playback pauses automatically whenever a game or application is launched in fullscreen mode. This drops CPU and GPU usage to near zero to prioritize system resources.
• Users can define rules based on the foreground application, pausing playback only when specific programs are active.
• When a laptop is running on battery power, the wallpaper freezes to conserve energy.
• Playback halts automatically during Remote Desktop sessions to save bandwidth and processing power.

Supported Content

• Web-based wallpapers are powered by a lightweight Chromium renderer. You can simply paste a Shadertoy URL to run complex shaders as your background.
• The software offers hardware-accelerated video playback through mpv or VLC and supports custom video filters.
• The interface supports drag-and-drop functionality. You can toss a video file or a webpage link directly onto the Lively window to set it as your wallpaper.

Dev Environment Setup

• IDE: Visual Studio Community 2022.
• Workloads: .NET Core cross-platform development, .NET Desktop Development, and WinUI 3 (Unpackaged).
• SDKs: The latest .NET Desktop SDK, .NET Framework 4.7.2, and Windows SDK versions 10.0.18362 and 10.0.22621.
• Architecture: Ensure the build target is switched from "Any CPU" to x64.

Project Structure

Core Modules

• Lively (Core): A WPF-based project that handles all system-level tasks. It operates independently of the main UI.
• Lively.Models: Contains shared data models used across the application.
• Lively.Common: Houses shared helpers and constant definitions.
• Lively.Common.Services: Dedicated to shared service logic.

UI and Interaction

• Lively.UI.WinUI: The primary frontend user interface.
• Lively.Grpc.Common: Contains gRPC classes and .proto definitions for communication.
• Lively.Grpc.Client: The client library used to communicate with the Core module.

Tools and Extensions

• Lively.ConsoleDemo: An example console application demonstrating the use of the gRPC client.
• Lively.Watchdog: A utility that monitors the core process, cleans up resources if a crash occurs, and maintains system stability.
• Lively.Screensaver: The module responsible for screensaver functionality.
• Lively.Commandline: A dedicated tool for CLI-based control.

Plugins Plugins are maintained separately from the core logic and UI. They are located in the Plugins directory within the Core folder and include modules such as UI, Wv2, Cef, Mpv, and Watchdog. For basic functionality, Cef, Mpv, UI, and Watchdog are required. During development, you should create a Plugins folder in the Core project; the build process is configured to copy these plugins to the final output directory.

Download and Install

Microsoft Store The most straightforward installation path for Windows 10 (build 1809) and newer.

Standalone Installer Available for Windows 10 (build 1903) and up. You may encounter a Windows SmartScreen warning during installation; this is expected behavior for signed executables that have not yet reached a high volume of global installations.