Lively Wallpaper

Lively Wallpaper is an open-source FREE desktop enhancement app that can transform the look of any desktop or laptop PC by infusing it with a stylish animated desktop background, with no performance penalties.

Built from the ground by a single developer named Dani John, this lightweight personalization app offers all of its users access to a limited library of pre-made animated content, and a wide array of tools for creating brand new animated backgrounds.

And most importantly, the entire process of displaying the live and animated desktop background will not put a noticeable additional strain on your PC hardware, and will automatically pause the reproduction of the live background any time some full-screen application is started (such as videogames or a full-screen video).



One of the core features present in the Lively Wallpaper PC app is its ability to empower users to create their own eye-catching animated wallpapers. This is done with built-in support for importing video files, GIFs, web content, shaders, HTML code, emulator software, and even games and converting them to a deployable desktop wallpaper that can be enjoyed passively or actively (with interactive elements that can be activated with mouse clicks).

Depending on the knowledge and technical level of the user, this app can be used for the fast creation of animated background videos for larger and more complicated projects best suited for seasoned programmers.

Lively Wallpaper takes full advantage of hardware-accelerated video codecs for multimedia reproduction (Direct Show, LAV, K-Lite, and Kawaii Codecs), and can accept video files in numerous popular files formats and containers (such as MKV, MP4, AVI, MOV, and WebM). Audio support is also present, but it will be active only when the app detects the presence of the user via recent desktop activity.

Advanced users can also set wallpaper playback rules, which will help them to take full control over their PC desktop surface based on the running of selected foreground applications. For example, the animated background can stop when Lively Wallpaper detects the presence of a productivity app. The app supports the deployment of animated wallpapers on multiple monitors at once, on a single selected display, and more.

Lively Wallpaper is 100% FREE and it can be run only on Windows 10 or Windows 11.  The app developer recommends at least 1GB of available storage space on any PC that can run this latest version of Microsoft OS.