Dynamic Wallpaper Club
August 27, 2019 9:09 AM Subscribe
Psst, hey, friend. That computer of yours—that a Mac you got there? You want some of those fancy desktop images that gradually change over the course of the day? Sure you do—so step right into Dynamic Wallpaper Club.
This post was deleted for the following reason: Poster's Request -- Brandon Blatcher
This site has a tool to create dynamic wallpapers and lets you browse other wallpapers people have made. It's not a tool to jury-rig them into the OS, which natively supports them just fine.
posted by zsazsa at 9:31 AM on August 27, 2019 [9 favorites]
posted by zsazsa at 9:31 AM on August 27, 2019 [9 favorites]
…Windows users have been enjoying as part of their native OS for years.
Not to rain on anyone's high dudgeon—lord only knows I love a good one myself—but back when I ran a little graphics site for fun, I released an animated Earth desktop for OS X 15 years ago that leveraged the OS' ability to change desktops on a set schedule. Never did get around to building a set designed to track the entire day hour by hour, but that was more because I was lazy; the idea absolutely occurred to me even back then.
The ability to put together a dynamic desktop environment in OS X has existed since Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar in 2002—nearly 2 decades now, mind you—when Apple introduced the cringe-worthily named Quartz Extreme and offloaded window compositing directly to the video card. This hardly qualifies as a jury-rigged feature. All you need for dynamic desktops in any version of macOS is a folder of images, a logical naming convention, and System Preferences.
posted by los pantalones del muerte at 10:26 AM on August 27, 2019 [7 favorites]
Not to rain on anyone's high dudgeon—lord only knows I love a good one myself—but back when I ran a little graphics site for fun, I released an animated Earth desktop for OS X 15 years ago that leveraged the OS' ability to change desktops on a set schedule. Never did get around to building a set designed to track the entire day hour by hour, but that was more because I was lazy; the idea absolutely occurred to me even back then.
The ability to put together a dynamic desktop environment in OS X has existed since Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar in 2002—nearly 2 decades now, mind you—when Apple introduced the cringe-worthily named Quartz Extreme and offloaded window compositing directly to the video card. This hardly qualifies as a jury-rigged feature. All you need for dynamic desktops in any version of macOS is a folder of images, a logical naming convention, and System Preferences.
posted by los pantalones del muerte at 10:26 AM on August 27, 2019 [7 favorites]
It's not a tool to jury-rig them into the OS, which natively supports them just fine.
Well, Mojave supports them. Before Mojave, though, nope. Users on earlier versions are still SOL. So Slarty's basic point (that Windows has had this for years, and Mac OS hasn't) is still valid.
posted by Thorzdad at 10:26 AM on August 27, 2019
Well, Mojave supports them. Before Mojave, though, nope. Users on earlier versions are still SOL. So Slarty's basic point (that Windows has had this for years, and Mac OS hasn't) is still valid.
posted by Thorzdad at 10:26 AM on August 27, 2019
<4 comments arguing which OS first implemented a tiny cosmetic feature first>
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Cool find, Sokka Shot First. Although the cynic in me wonders who was crying out for an animated desktop picture of some random carpark, the landscape pictures are nice.
posted by AndrewStephens at 10:39 AM on August 27, 2019 [4 favorites]
MetaFilter: News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters
Cool find, Sokka Shot First. Although the cynic in me wonders who was crying out for an animated desktop picture of some random carpark, the landscape pictures are nice.
posted by AndrewStephens at 10:39 AM on August 27, 2019 [4 favorites]
I have been looking for exactly this! Thanks for sharing. I really like the firewatch one!
posted by congen at 11:08 AM on August 27, 2019
posted by congen at 11:08 AM on August 27, 2019
(For pre-Mojave users: How to Get Dynamic Desktops on Any Version of Mac OS – Without Mojave!)
There are some lovely wallpapers here, and the only thing keeping me from installing one (or several!) right now is that I always keep so many windows open that I haven't seen my desktop in years. Sigh.
Thanks for this, Sokka shot first! Great find.
posted by kristi at 11:30 AM on August 27, 2019 [3 favorites]
There are some lovely wallpapers here, and the only thing keeping me from installing one (or several!) right now is that I always keep so many windows open that I haven't seen my desktop in years. Sigh.
Thanks for this, Sokka shot first! Great find.
posted by kristi at 11:30 AM on August 27, 2019 [3 favorites]
I was being silly because windoze is ...usually in the opposite position. Get it?
note to self: people take their operating systems too seriously to see the humor, try making fun of their momma instead...
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 11:43 AM on August 27, 2019 [1 favorite]
note to self: people take their operating systems too seriously to see the humor, try making fun of their momma instead...
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 11:43 AM on August 27, 2019 [1 favorite]
The crazy thing is that now you can put an entire animated Earth in a single GL shader, or maybe even the entire history of the Earth (note: requires beefy WebGL graphics support)
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 11:53 AM on August 27, 2019
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 11:53 AM on August 27, 2019
So many pretty landscapes, so few flying toasters...
posted by Mchelly at 12:43 PM on August 27, 2019 [4 favorites]
posted by Mchelly at 12:43 PM on August 27, 2019 [4 favorites]
Unsurprised many of the themes are anime related. Although the highlighted themes are pleasant, detailed, and don't involve saucer-eyed girls in compromising positions.
And yeah, MacOS X has had scheduled background cycling build-in pretty much for as long as it's existed. It's only in Mojave that the cycling could be tied to a day/night cycle.
A few of the themes in the collections are simply a set of related images without representing day or night states and could easily be repurposed on pre-Mojave desktops.
posted by ardgedee at 1:20 PM on August 27, 2019
And yeah, MacOS X has had scheduled background cycling build-in pretty much for as long as it's existed. It's only in Mojave that the cycling could be tied to a day/night cycle.
A few of the themes in the collections are simply a set of related images without representing day or night states and could easily be repurposed on pre-Mojave desktops.
posted by ardgedee at 1:20 PM on August 27, 2019
It's nice that people are creating these. When Apple announced dynamic wallpapers on macOS I just added them to my mental list of new animated wallpaper types that Apple introduces, provides a couple examples of, then either never creates any new examples of or removes existing ones.
See iOS and its Dynamic wallpapers that haven't had any new examples added since like iOS 7; and its Live wallpapers that currently has a total of three options, although Apple removed the first batch of animated fish examples.
posted by good in a vacuum at 2:08 PM on August 27, 2019 [1 favorite]
See iOS and its Dynamic wallpapers that haven't had any new examples added since like iOS 7; and its Live wallpapers that currently has a total of three options, although Apple removed the first batch of animated fish examples.
posted by good in a vacuum at 2:08 PM on August 27, 2019 [1 favorite]
there better be some lofi hip hop radio - beats to relax/study to wallpaper or this site is useless to me, useless.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 5:24 PM on August 27, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 5:24 PM on August 27, 2019 [1 favorite]
Out of interest: did you also discover this from the link on Matt Mullenweg's blog after reading his post on Tumblr? I literally discovered it yesterday, and shared it with two people, only to discover that they'd already found it the same way.
posted by sincarne at 3:28 AM on August 28, 2019
posted by sincarne at 3:28 AM on August 28, 2019
I've found that many of the wallpapers have stopped matching the time of day on my computer. With some of them it's fine, but I've found it weirdly disorienting for the ones that represent specific times of day with day and night skies - the ones I like the most. I've fiddled with my date and time settings and can't seem to make a difference. The support is telegram only and I don't use or want to use it, so I guess I'm going to have to switch to some other kind of progression :(
posted by congen at 9:04 AM on September 4, 2019
posted by congen at 9:04 AM on September 4, 2019
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posted by Slarty Bartfast at 9:25 AM on August 27, 2019