Lively - Animated Wallpaper System

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About

Turn Video & GIF Files, Emulators, HTML, Web address & Shaders, Games into Windows desktop wallpaper; Wallpapers will completely pause playback( 0% cpu & gpu usage) when fullscreen application/games are running.

Just drag & drop files, webpages to set as wallpaper..

Join Discussions:

Lively is still in development, if you encounter bugs create a github Issue along with log file

Help translate lively to other languages: Translation Files

Full Documentation

Features

Wait a sec, preview gif clips take some time to load.

Video

Foggy Landscape by Tom Fisk

Use external codec packs or internal windows codec.
Play .mp4, mkv, webm, avi, mov etc
Hardware Acceleration support.
Audio will mute when not on desktop.

Youtube & streams

Just drag & drop youtube link to set as desktop wallpaper.
Video quality is adjustable in settings.
Additional software required.

Web Pages & html

25th Hour by Loius Coyle

Load HTML file or web address as wallpaper.
Runs webgl, javascript .. basically anything that works on chrome.
Audio Reactive Wallpaper support, create wallpapers that react to system audio
Customisation support, documentation.

Shaders

The Universe Within, The Drive Home by BigWIngs

Run GLSL shaders in browser.
Shadertoy.com urls are supported as wallpaper.

Retro Game Emulators

Coming soon

Games

Can launch Unity & Godot games as wallpaper.
Dynamic audio visualisers, 3D scenes..

GIFs

Nyan cat

Make Memes/Cinemagraphs as wallpaper ...

Other Applications

Experimentail, works for some.

& more:

Easy to use, Just drag & drop media files & webpages into lively window to set it as wallpaper.
Real-time customisable web wallpaper support.
Easy to share Lively-zip format, just drag & drop the zip file to import it into Library, use the built-in creator to make them (ensures compatibility).
Hardware accelerated video playback, with option to use external Directshow codec of your choice. ( LAV(recommended), K-Lite, Kawaii Codec..)
Library to browse and preview wallpapers.
You can use it alongside rainmeter.
Efficient, its a native c# wpf application with c++ calls.
Fully opensource & free; no blackmagic, no features behind paywall.

multiple monitor support:

Full Multiple monitor support.
Span single wallpaper across all screens.
Duplicate same wallpaper all screens.
Different wallpaper per screens.

Regarding Performance:

Wallpaper playback pauses when fullscreen application/games run on the machine (~0% cpu, gpu usage).
Optionally you can set wallpaper to only play when on desktop.
Application rules: Set wallpaper playback rules based on running foreground application.(like always pause when photoshop is open etc)
Based on display(multiple monitor): Pause wallpaper playback per-display(depending on which monitor fullscreen apps/games run) or all display(s).
Kill wallpaper when fullscreen apps/games run(coming soon).
Mute audio when not on desktop (or optionally always mute).

I'm not officially affiliated with Unity technologies, godot, shadertoy;

Download

Latest version: v0.9.6.0 (Windows 10, 8.1)What's new?

Download Lively Installer
102MB, Web wallpaper support & some sample wallpapers included.
Download Lively Portable
111MB, (No Installation & updater) Web wallpaper support & some sample wallpapers included.

Portable build: Latest Visual C++ Redistributable is required: vc_redist.x86.exe

Installer will give Smartscreen warning, discussion.

Certain antivirus software heuristics algorithm will detect lively as a virus, this is a false positive lively is fully opensource, you are free to inspect the code.

Having trouble?

Issues

~~TODO List~~

See github issues.

Contributing

Code contributions are welcome, check guidelines for making pull request.

Some Lively languages are machine translated,