mpvpaper – video wallpaper software

mpvpaper lets you play videos as desktop wallpapers on wlroots-based Wayland compositors. It uses mpv for playback, bringing support for a wide range of video formats without needing a conventional graphical wallpaper manager.

Videos can be assigned to individual monitors or played across all connected displays. mpvpaper also supports playlists and timed slideshows, with playback options passed directly to mpv.

One of its more useful features is the ability to reduce resource consumption when the wallpaper is obscured. Automatic pause and stop modes can suspend playback when the compositor reports that the background is hidden. Version 1.9 extended this behaviour with detection of fullscreen, maximised and active windows.

These automatic controls depend on compositor support and may not work consistently everywhere. As an alternative, mpvpaper supports watch lists that pause or stop playback when specified applications are running.

This is free and open source software.

Key Features

• Play video wallpapers using mpv on wlroots-based Wayland compositors.
• Assign wallpapers to individual monitors or all connected outputs.
• Play video playlists with configurable slideshow intervals.
• Forward mpv options for looping, shuffling, audio control and other playback settings.
• Automatically pause or stop playback when wallpapers are hidden, reducing CPU and memory consumption.
• Extend automatic playback control to fullscreen, maximised and active windows, subject to compositor support.
• Use pauselist and stoplist files to suspend playback while specified applications are running.
• Control playback through mpv keyboard bindings or an IPC socket.

Website: github.com/GhostNaN/mpvpaper
Support:
Developer: Henri Hänninen
License: GNU General Public License v3.0

mpvpaper is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.

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