Any Wallpaper Engine enthusiasts here that can educate me as to why it’s so popular?
Is it really that much better than just finding wallpapers with an image search like in the old days?
this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2026
141 points (98.6% liked)
Technology
85515 readers
4205 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
I have an animated 80s-PC-vibe sirenhead wall paper with a music bar visualizer and working clock I've had since 2021 and I love it too much to ever take it off..
I haven't touched it since, so I don't know what's going on currently
Wallpaper engine allows for animated/video wallpapers. When I used windows I had this cool neutron star wallpaper that would spin around
I thought those were a waste of resources when that kind of feature debuted with Windows Vista, but I'm the kind of guy who runs Xfce with animations turned off, so...
I'm with you, but I guess lots of people are like oohhh shiny. Want
It's not images, it's 'live' animated wallpapers. Like on android. I use one of the built-in ones that acts as a... I can't think of the term, like a visualizer of what part on the sound spectrum is being played, but in circle form instead of just horizontal. When I'm not playing music, it acts as a pixel-style 'flying through space' like Win 9x screensavers.
I've tried others on the workshop, and they are fun to poke at, but I never keep them long. Rainmeter fits my needs so more basic wallpapers work for me.
Yes, it's much better for me. Animated, or even reactive wallpapers, have stepped up my desktop personalization so much, I don't really care to go back to boring still images.
All I can think to this kind of thing is: if you're spending so much time staring at the wallpaper, what's the rest of your computer for?
I personally try to leave as little of the wallpaper visible as possible, but I guess I'm the weird one.
I never said I spent a particularly long time "staring" at my wallpaper.
I also don't spend a long time looking at the wallpaper on my phone, but I still like to decide what it looks like and customize/personalize it.
I see my computer desktop at boot up. Before and after starting games, usually. I have two monitors, and the side one is not always filled. For that matter, my main monitor is 4k but I don't ever have one single thing full screen, so usually have windows staggered or tiled and bits of desktop are often poking through.
You guys can see your wallpapers?
Any wallpaper from the Steam Workshop that also requires a separate EXE or DLL file to run is an insta-no-dawg from me.
They know their audience.
Me being a cheapskate saved my ass for once, phew!
Bruhhh lol
I used Wallpaper engine when i was on windows. I don't use my hyprland environment often, but I'm glad i can get something similar with mpvpaper.
Damn, I gotta get back into the malware game.