Wallpaper Engine is one of the most popular third-party apps offering millions of wallpers to users. However, it looks like the recent Windows 11 update may have broken the app for users. In case you missed it, last week Microsoft released the Moment 4 update for Windows 11 which brought new features and Windows Copilot, a generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) assistant powered by Bing AI.
Unfortuately, Windows Copilot may be the culprit when it comes to performance issues with Wallpaper Engine. Users on Reddit and the Steam community have mentioned that the new update is causing a conflict with the app resulting in various issues and crashes. On a separate thread on the Steam community, the dev team acknowledged the issue and noted that the best solution for the users is to get off Windows Insider Preview and disable HDR.
Back in July when Microsoft was testing the Moment 4 update, the Wallpaper Engine team had confirmed that they had a conversation around the update and the issues reported by Windows Insiders.
After a discussion with Microsoft, they have removed the HDR wallpaper feature for now and they will overhaul the underlying system so that compatibility with wallpaper apps like Wallpaper Engine will be kept in the future.
The team also noted that due to the large number of complaints, they are unable to reply to everyone but have suggested getting off the Insider Preview as Microsoft is making extreme changes to Windows Desktop and it is not feasible for the team to provide solutions.
We currently cannot fix issues for you because we extensively talked to Microsoft and they are making extreme changes to the desktop experience right now and partially rolling back some recent changes. It's just not realistically possible to provide support for this under the current circumstances though we are working with Microsoft for a long-term solution before these updates go live to stable versions of Windows. We will look at their changes in due time. If you want a stable Windows experience, please opt out of the Windows Insider's program. It sounds harsh but that is the only honest suggestion we can make.
Unfortunately, we are seeing same reports from users on the Feedback Hub as well. Personally, I had to reinstall Wallpaper Engine and disable Windows Copilot after the Moment 4 update on my system. It does not look like Microsoft addressed the issue completely before releasing the Moment 4 update to users.
Thankfully, you can disable Windows Copilot if it is causing issues or if you are not a fan of the new AI assistant. If you are in the EU, then consider yourself lucky as a recent law has prevented Microsoft from rolling out Copilot to users in the EU. However, you may not be as fortunate if you have an AMD GPU as the new update is causing all kinds of driver issues for AMD users.
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