FAQ

FAQ

Q: Does this work on Plasma 5? No. This project targets Plasma 6 / Qt 6 only. For Plasma 5, use the Qt5 branch of the original catsout project.

Q: Do I have to buy Wallpaper Engine? For Scene and Web wallpapers, yes — the plugin reads assets from your local Wallpaper Engine install. Pure video files you have on disk can usually be played without it, but the Workshop catalogue (the actual reason to use this) requires the Steam purchase + Workshop subscription.

Q: Is this an emulator? Is it running Wallpaper Engine itself? No. It's an independent renderer (see Scene Renderer) that understands Wallpaper Engine's asset formats — Scene, Web, Video — and plays them through Vulkan/Qt. It doesn't run any Windows code.

Q: Can I use this on GNOME / XFCE / Sway? No. It's a KDE Plasma wallpaper plugin and ties into Plasma's wallpaper system. Other desktops would need their own integration.

Q: Audio Reactive wallpapers — do they react to my system audio? Yes, when the wallpaper uses Wallpaper Engine's audio-spectrum uniforms. The renderer captures audio via PipeWire / PulseAudio monitor source, runs a KissFFT spectrum analysis (16/32/64 bands, L+R), and feeds the result to shaders as g_AudioSpectrum* uniforms. See Scene Renderer → Audio.

Q: Does it work on Wayland? Yes. Plasma 6's wallpaper subsystem runs the same on X11 and Wayland.

Q: My Workshop wallpapers are stored on a second drive — what do I point at? The plugin asks for the steamlibrary. Whichever drive's library contains steamapps/common/wallpaper_engine/, point at that drive's library root (the folder that contains steamapps/).

Q: Will it survive a Plasma upgrade? Usually yes. On rpm-ostree systems specifically, install via RPM — that's the whole reason the project ships an RPM spec. Hand-copied files in /usr/share/... are wiped by ostree updates; layered packages aren't.

Q: Why is the renderer in a separate repo? wallpaper-scene-renderer is meant to be reusable — it's a pure Vulkan renderer for Wallpaper Engine's asset formats and can in principle be embedded in other shells / standalone viewers. The KDE plugin pulls it in as a Git submodule and wires it to Plasma's wallpaper API.

Q: Why is feature X missing? See Scene Renderer → Roadmap for a writeup of each unimplemented feature and what it would take to land.

Q: Can I use a custom shader / write my own wallpaper? Not directly through the plugin yet — user-defined customshader properties are on the renderer's easy roadmap. For now you can author Workshop wallpapers in the Wallpaper Engine editor on Windows and consume them here.

Q: Why does my lock screen not show the live wallpaper? Screen locking is not supported — see Known Issues.