When it comes to dynamic wallpaper software, many people have likely heard of or used Wallpaper Engine, a highly-rated wallpaper software on the Steam Store priced at $3.99 (or regional equivalent). I have been using it myself for a while, but today I'm introducing another wallpaper software: Lively Wallpaper.
1. Lively Wallpaper
Lively is a dynamic wallpaper software that is completely open-source and free. It is primarily developed by Dani John and supports setting animated desktop wallpapers and screen savers, as well as multi-monitor setups. Built with .NET Core, the core of Lively is written in WPF, while the UI uses WinUI3.
Using Lively Wallpaper is very simple and convenient. It also supports setting images, videos, web pages, Unity, and Godot games as wallpapers.
2. Screen Saver
Lively also supports setting Windows screen savers.
3. Automation
Lively can control wallpapers and customization by passing command-line parameters.
4. Lively API
Lively provides a powerful API that makes it easy to capture mouse and keyboard events, as well as system information, enabling developers to create interactive wallpapers.
5. Customizable Taskbar
Lively also supports customizing the taskbar, including on Windows 11. It offers selectable themes such as transparent, blur, Gaussian blur, semi-transparent, etc., allowing your taskbar to blend seamlessly with the desktop wallpaper!
6. Development Journey
In fact, Lively has been in development for several years, and the development process has been quite magical. In pursuit of high performance and smoothness, the author rewrote the UI in the following order: Winform -> WPF -> UWP -> WinUI3.
I wonder if Microsoft will release a new UI framework next year, haha...
7. Download & Installation
- GitHub Download: https://github.com/rocksdanister/lively/releases
- Windows Store
