Run GLSL shaders as your Linux wallpaper.

Paste a Shadertoy shader into a file, point neowall at it, get an animated desktop. Wayland + X11, multi-monitor, single static binary, no daemon-in-Python anywhere.

neowall

It pauses itself the moment a window covers the wallpaper, so it isn't burning your battery while you actually use the computer.

# Arch (AUR)
yay -S neowall-git

# Prebuilt binary
# https://github.com/1ay1/neowall/releases/latest
tar -xzf neowall-linux-x86_64-*.tar.gz
sudo install -m755 neowall /usr/local/bin/

# From source
git clone https://github.com/1ay1/neowall && cd neowall
meson setup build && ninja -C build
sudo ninja -C build install

# Debian/Ubuntu
sudo apt install build-essential meson ninja-build libwayland-dev \
    libgles2-mesa-dev libpng-dev libjpeg-dev wayland-protocols \
    libx11-dev libxrandr-dev

# Arch
sudo pacman -S base-devel meson ninja wayland mesa libpng libjpeg-turbo \
    wayland-protocols libx11 libxrandr

# Fedora
sudo dnf install gcc meson ninja-build wayland-devel mesa-libGLES-devel \
    libpng-devel libjpeg-turbo-devel wayland-protocols-devel \
    libX11-devel libXrandr-devel

~/.config/neowall/config.vibe

default {
  shader retro_wave.glsl
  shader_speed 0.8
}

Image slideshow:

default {
  path ~/Pictures/Wallpapers/
  duration 300
  transition glitch
}

Per-output:

output {
  DP-1     { shader matrix_rain.glsl }
  HDMI-A-1 { path ~/Pictures/ duration 600 }
}

Full reference: config/docs/CONFIG.md.

neowall          # start
neowall kill     # stop
neowall reload   # reload config
neowall next     # next wallpaper / shader
neowall pause    # pause cycling
neowall resume
neowall pause-shader   # freeze the shader animation in place
neowall resume-shader  # resume a frozen shader animation
neowall list     # show queue
neowall set 3    # jump to index
neowall current  # print what's playing

30+ in the box. Bring your own — neowall accepts unmodified Shadertoy GLSL: drop a .glsl file into ~/.config/neowall/shaders/ and reference it from your config.

Pair it with GLEditor for a live-preview shader workflow that one-clicks into neowall.

neowall is a superset of Shadertoy: on top of full compatibility it feeds shaders live data from your machine and ships a GLSL std-lib (noise, SDFs, palettes, tonemap) injected automatically — no #include. Shaders can react to system audio (FFT), CPU/RAM/network load, battery, the real time of day, and your mouse/keyboard. See docs/REACTIVE_SHADERS.md.

Drop a .neowall sidecar next to any shader for explicit channel bindings and custom reactive uniforms (e.g. uniform uGlow audio_bass). Audio capture uses parec (PipeWire/PulseAudio) and degrades to silence if it's not installed.

Changing what feeds iChannel0..3 (audio, noise, self-feedback, another buffer, a texture, a bitmap font atlas): a bare .glsl guesses via a heuristic; a .neowall sidecar lets you bind each channel explicitly — channel0 audio, channel1 self, channel2 font, etc. See docs/REACTIVE_SHADERS.md.

Any terminal program can be the wallpaper. neowall ships its own in-tree, dependency-free VT/xterm-class terminal emulator (real PTY, spec-correct ANSI/DEC parser, cell grid with SGR truecolour, scroll regions, the alternate screen, mouse reporting and colour emoji) and renders its cell grid on the GPU — so btop, htop, cava, vim or a scrolling journalctl -f run live behind your windows.

default {
  terminal btop
  term_cols 0     # 0 = auto-fit the whole display
  term_rows 0
}

default {
  terminal "journalctl -f"
  term_font_size 16
  term_shader crt.glsl    # optional: pipe the terminal through a CRT/glow pass
}

It's a real terminal, not a screenshot: it answers the startup handshake (cursor-position report, Device Attributes) so probing TUIs enter their render loop and animate, forwards the pointer when the app enables mouse reporting, and auto-restarts the command if it exits. No libvterm, no external terminal — every byte of the parser and screen model is in-tree, in the same spirit as neowall's hand-rolled event loop and config parser.

Full key reference (term_font, term_font_size, term_fg/term_bg, term_cwd, term_env, term_shader, …) is in config/docs/CONFIG.md.

Single C binary. The event loop is built on timerfd + signalfd — there is no polling thread anywhere. Rendering goes through EGL → OpenGL 3.3 (desktop) with a GLES 2.0 fallback for older GPUs.

config.vibe → event loop ─┬─→ EGL / OpenGL 3.3
                          ├─→ Wayland (layer-shell)
                          └─→ X11 (root window + EWMH)

Smart pause is the main thing that separates neowall from the obvious one-evening hack:

• Wayland: wl_surface.frame watchdog + wlr-foreign-toplevel state bits, plus a Hyprland-specific IPC path that handles the awkward "tiled mosaic of small windows covers the wallpaper" case
• X11: EWMH _NET_WM_STATE_FULLSCREEN on every output

Result: while a fullscreen game, a maximized browser, or a wall of tiled terminals is covering the screen, neowall draws zero frames. The moment you switch workspaces, it picks back up.

If you want video wallpapers, use mpvpaper — neowall is deliberately not that.

• KDE Plasma: native desktop icons may hide while neowall owns the background layer. Use a dock or plasma-desktop's widgets.
• GNOME: works through the fallback path; Mutter doesn't expose layer-shell, so z-order behavior is less guaranteed than on wlroots compositors.
• No video: by design.

meson setup build --buildtype=debug
ninja -C build
./build/neowall -f -v

Architecture, threading model, and contribution conventions are documented in docs/ARCHITECTURE.md. Run the test suite (headless, no display server needed) with meson test -C build; for the memory-safety and concurrency gates use a sanitized build:

meson setup build-asan -Db_sanitize=address,undefined && meson test -C build-asan
meson setup build-tsan -Db_sanitize=thread && meson test -C build-tsan output_refcount

Shaders, bug reports, and compositor coverage PRs are all welcome. Issue tracker is the place.

MIT.

Issues · Discussions · ★ if it's your thing