Here's how to set up animated desktop wallpapers on Windows 10

[Usman Khan Lodhi]

Here's how to set up animated desktop wallpapers on Windows 10
by Usman Khan Lodhi

Windows offers three choices to users when setting up desktop wallpapers. The wallpaper can be changed from the Background settings, which lets users choose between a picture, a color, or a slideshow containing photos that change at preset intervals. Users that are tired of these options can now set up animated desktop wallpapers, thanks to Lively Wallpaper, a free and open-source software.



Using Lively Wallpaper, users can make desktop wallpapers out of videos, GIFs, emulators, web addresses, and more. The installation process is pretty straightforward. Once the setup file is downloaded, one simply needs to run it. While installing, it's possible that the software is flagged as a virus, but GitHub user rocksdanister, the developer of Lively Wallpaper, noted that this is a false positive, and encouraged users to inspect the code of the open-source software.

When installed, Lively Wallpaper can be accessed from the icon tray at the right-bottom of the screen. It features a total of 12 wallpapers that come preloaded, and there is also an option to add more. Doing so simply requires dragging and dropping files or webpages that users would like to set as the desktop wallpaper. Additionally, users can also set up video streams as wallpapers by following the same steps. Video quality can be adjusted to one's preference.

When I ran Lively Wallpaper on my PC, I set up Eternal Light, which is a render of a beautiful sunset, as the background. On average, it utilized around 25 percent of the GPU (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER) and had a negligible impact on the CPU. Upon switching to any full-screen application, the wallpaper playback is paused, which means I don't have to worry while playing GPU-intensive games like Red Dead Redemption 2. There are additional settings that let users set wallpaper playback rules based on running foreground applications.

Lively Wallpaper also comes with multiple monitor support, which means users can span a wallpaper across all screens, duplicate the same wallpaper across all screens, or set up different wallpapers for each screen.

The developer admits that Lively is still in development, so it is possible that users may encounter bugs. He encourages users to create a GitHub issue along with a log file.

To get Lively Wallpaper, head over to its GitHub repository, and download the latest version (v1.1.4.0) of the software. The software requires you to have Windows 10 version 1903 or above, so if you haven't updated Windows in a while, now would be a good time to do so.

[Son_Of_Dad]

'To run this application you must install .NET core. Would you like to download it now?' Downloaded it, installed it, still getting the message about needing it.

Aaaaand Uninstall!

[Steven P. Administrators]

I highly recommend Desktop Earth http://www.anka.me/desktopearth.aspx it's what I use.

I have a 5120x1440 screen so if anyone can suggest me other cool live wallpapers, let me know