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Comment by danans | Hacker News Reader

Tangentially, I find wallpaper to be fascinating as it's one of the few aspects of desktop UX that is basically still 100% open to self-expression.

For functional reasons, every other desktop UI surface has converged with only a few minor variations. But the static desktop OS background - perhaps because it has no inherent functional purpose and remains covered most of the time - remains as a canvas.

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I leave at least a few pixels around the edges of windows to let my desktop picture show through, partially because that’s some of the little remaining customization but also because having my screens filled to the brim with windows negatively impacts my mood, as silly as that sounds. The desktops I choose usually carry a positive and/or calming vibe and that’s felt during my workday if some of it can show through.

> the static desktop OS background

Eons ago, there was a (paid) 3rd-party program for MacOS Classic that would give you a slideshow desktop background. The images were of the Golden Gate bridge, and were a timelapse over the course of a day. The changes were (afair) synced to your local solar time, so 'sunset' in the desktop background would line up with your local sunset.

I'd have to search to find the name of the program, but I kind of wish I had it back.

In classic Apple fashion, that's built in to the OS now.

Well, it's not for MacOS, but software to run animated wallpapers exist for Windows.

One example is the very popular WallpaperEngine [0]. Another cool one (and open source) is Lively Wallpaper [1].

Selfless plug: I've also developed and released LumoTray [2] which is a wallpaper/screensaver manager for windows with some other extra features but without any animated wallpapers except slideshows as I still find it a bit of a resource waste for something that I rarely see.

[0] https://www.wallpaperengine.io

[1] https://www.rocksdanister.com/lively/

[2] https://lumotray.com/

I think ActiveDesktop still works, too

To be fair, most built in wallpapers in macOS do have a day/night version (for example Sonoma), or multiple versions with sunrise/day/sunset/night (Ventura, Monterey, Big sur). Apple does call them Dynamic backgrounds and they will switch automatically during the day.

Also, I hate to do this but if I'm allowed, tinniest plug, I do maintain a screensaver project for macOS that does video both screensaver and wallpaper integration with solar time adaptation : https://aerialscreensaver.github.io (the default download will give you the app that does the wallpaper integration).

There was one of these apps for early versions of OS X too.

I’ve searched for it several times, but as far as the web is concerned it never existed. Would really like to find it because its default desktop picture was pleasant (during the day, a blue sky over a field of flowers if I recall correctly) and it would be nice to see it again.

Sadly a lot of early-mid-00s Mac shareware like that has seemingly vanished.

Current versions of MacOS allow you to have a slideshow for your wallpaper

I used to be a wallpaper hoarder but nowadays my wallpaper is just 100% black color to avoid the janky brightness shift while minimizing/maximizing dark themed windows. I have a large monitor so the effect is more pronounced compared to a smaller laptop screen.

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