Very neat. I was confused at first, I was like you can download the video screensavers.. why scrape the frames. Then I saw your comment and read I can use my own videos for desktop and lock screen. Great work! Dont bury the lede! A title with the hook of what and how would be super helpful!
On a similar note, I’d love to replace Aerials on tvOS with my own videos. I have yet to figure out how to craft a working data feed that the tvOS will accept using the secret mode that I believe is used in the retail store displays.
Wow, thank you for this. I've been working on a screensaver suite but LegacyScreenSaver is so janky. I was hoping someone would figure out apple's private wallpaper framework and you did!
As much (fairly well deserved) hate as Tahoe gets, the video wallpapers and transparency are such a fun Windows Vista vibe I get nostalgia. Time to set this up with the Vista waterfall wallpaper and reallllyyy feel like it’s 2007!
which waterfall are you talking about? i am also surprised to see how many wallpapers were apparently available on Vista. All I remember is the default green gradient thingie and I think I had the bamboo forest on at some point
The moving wallpapers are near the first few times but I can't turn it off. I had to dig deep into WallpaperKit (I mean really? It's a friggin wallpaper) to find the static last frame of the wooshy moving BS.
Same! I distinctly remember seeing portions of this wallpaper that led me to believe it's procedurally generated and not simply a collection of video files, and had to rewatch it to confirm. There are several points where the date and time match the system date and time down to the second.
Out of curiosity: how much did you need to steer Claude while working on this project, and how long did it have?
Asking partly because I see "Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>", and partly because I keep hearing "so what do you do with all these agents", and this is a good example of what people do with all these agents.
So cool!
This reminds me I wanted to try setting a custom video background with some footage i had.
Didn’t even realize it wasn’t natively supported till i saw this!
The app now has a landing page with a download link and you can also see my other projects: the largest one is Refrax browser, but I also have many other small utility apps!
I won't use it, myself, because I can't deal with wallpaper moving behind my work (I also can't listen to music, while I work. Maybe it's a "generational" thing). Also, I use a 49-inch ultrawide, so it might be vomit-inducing.
I remember some other utility that played wallpaper videos, but it wasn't anywhere near as nicely done.
These damned wallpapers gave me my worst experience with Apple. MacOS would delete them and redownload automatically over and over again, using almost a terrabyte of data per week.
And I wasn't even using video wallpapers at the time.
Just discovered I had no internet 3 days into the month as my ISP had cut me off. Had to dig deep and spend hours I'll never get back trying to find out where all the data was going.
This app injects itself directly into Apple’s actual pipeline, so your videos won’t get removed or changed. It’s not just an automated replacer of Apple’s own videos.
You could set a full-screen, interactive browser page as the backdrop of your desktop. Not sure what communication it was allowed to have with the desktop events, but I always thought it was a clever hack that could have been explored and expanded further.
i remember setting a html with a flash file and it did track the cursor accurately for some fun effects. couldn't keep it like that due to resource use but yeah, it was fun!
icons and text would get single-color backdrops though. no transparency back to the html
The video will keep playing on the lock screen, but screen savers are a different thing. You can have the same video as your wallpaper and screen saver though.
I wonder about this when I see someone post their own work without the Show HN prefix - is it always supposed to be a Show? (Enforcement/community objection to the lack thereof doesn't seem to be very strenuous, if so. Or, maybe it gets fixed after a little while and I haven't noticed.)
On a similar note, I’d love to replace Aerials on tvOS with my own videos. I have yet to figure out how to craft a working data feed that the tvOS will accept using the secret mode that I believe is used in the retail store displays.
I see what you did there :)
which waterfall are you talking about? i am also surprised to see how many wallpapers were apparently available on Vista. All I remember is the default green gradient thingie and I think I had the bamboo forest on at some point
/System/Library/ExtensionKit/Extensions/WallpaperMacintoshExtension.appex
Can see the time and date being added here I think:
System6ControlPanel.program
Out of curiosity: how much did you need to steer Claude while working on this project, and how long did it have?
Asking partly because I see "Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>", and partly because I keep hearing "so what do you do with all these agents", and this is a good example of what people do with all these agents.
https://kagerou.glass/phosphene/
https://kagerou.glass
also, nice typography.
However, it may definitely get broken by Apple, as you note.
I won't use it, myself, because I can't deal with wallpaper moving behind my work (I also can't listen to music, while I work. Maybe it's a "generational" thing). Also, I use a 49-inch ultrawide, so it might be vomit-inducing.
I remember some other utility that played wallpaper videos, but it wasn't anywhere near as nicely done.
And I wasn't even using video wallpapers at the time.
Just discovered I had no internet 3 days into the month as my ISP had cut me off. Had to dig deep and spend hours I'll never get back trying to find out where all the data was going.
Here's a thread I just found now that shows others having similar issues: https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/1ii38g8/macbook_wall...
icons and text would get single-color backdrops though. no transparency back to the html