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Native Metal renderer for Wallpaper Engine scenes on macOS: particle systems, puppet warp, audio-reactive shaders, and per-display render threads.

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Loomscreen

Loomscreen

A living desktop, arranged your way.

Native macOS live wallpapers, a visual workspace for every display, and widgets, music and weather in one overlay canvas. Pro adds Wallpaper Engine scenes rendered with Metal and Steam Workshop.

macOS Architecture License Release

🏠 Website · ⬇ Download · 🚀 Quick Start · ✨ Features · ⚖ Lite vs Pro · 🛠 Build · 🌐 中文

Overview showing two displays in their desktop arrangement above the wallpaper shelf

Lite and Pro are both free and open source under MIT. The renderer is an independent implementation, not affiliated with Wallpaper Engine; compatibility varies by project. Workshop downloads use your own Steam account and license.

Your desktop, in one workspace

  1. See every display in Overview, arranged like your Mac's desktop.
  2. Choose a wallpaper from the shelf or the unified Wallpaper Library, then drag it onto a display or apply it by name.
  3. Make it yours in the display editor: tune playback, arrange widgets, clock and music together, and save a display scheme.

The menu bar keeps everyday controls close. Closing the management window keeps wallpapers running. Explore the workspace.

One canvas for your layers. Arrange widgets, clock and music together. Wallpaper Engine scenes on Mac. Pro renders compatible scenes natively with Metal.
Display editor Overlays canvas with widgets, the layer list and the Add Widget palette Display editor Wallpaper tab with a scene preview and its custom settings

Wallpaper types

Type Edition What you get
Wallpaper Engine scenes Pro Native Metal renderer for scene.pkg projects — particles, shader effects, puppet-warp animation, audio-reactive layers, cursor effects. Import local project folders or download via Steam Workshop, including community presets. Compatibility varies by project.
Video Lite + Pro mp4 / m4v / mov / avi, smooth looping, HDR-aware color pipeline, per-display or spanned across all displays.
Web pages Lite + Pro Sandboxed WKWebView with JavaScript toggle, tracker blocking, custom CSS, and auto-refresh.
Apple Aerials Lite + Pro Browse and apply the Apple TV aerial videos already on your Mac.

Pro Workshop page with a grid of Steam Workshop wallpapers
Pro: browse Steam Workshop and download with your own Steam account.

More than a player

  • Per-display control — every monitor runs its own wallpaper; apply one wallpaper to all screens, or span a video or Pro scene across them.
  • Playlists & scheduling — shuffle, rotation intervals, time-of-day slots, and a bookmark library for one-click swaps.
  • Menu bar first — global on/off, per-display play/pause and prev/next, plus a live CPU / GPU / RAM / thermal strip.
  • One overlay canvas — arrange eleven widget types, a freely resizable Nixie or Split-Flap clock and music per display. Add 12 particle effects and weather response through the effect layer.
  • Opening & switching animations — choose how your desktop appears and how wallpapers change, with simpler motion under Reduce Motion and Low Power Mode.
  • Music layer — Spotify and Apple Music, plus the system Now Playing source in Pro, Poster/Vinyl/Aurora layouts, cover art, playback controls and optional synchronized lyrics. Pro adds system audio-driven visual effects.
  • System Wallpaper (macOS 26+) — publish videos to the macOS wallpaper provider so they can play with Loomscreen closed, subject to provider compatibility.
  • Power-aware playback — configurable full-screen, occlusion, battery and Low Power Mode rules; lock/sleep and resource-pressure handling preserve your play/pause intent.
  • Global shortcuts — eight bindable actions, from play/pause-all to reload.
  • Bookmarks, likes and schemes — mark favorite wallpapers with a yellow bookmark and filter the library by it; Pro likes Workshop items with a pink heart to download later; schemes restore a display's full setup. .lwconfig backs up settings and references; media files and machine-specific file grants are not portable with it.
  • Five interface languages — English, 简体中文, 繁體中文, 日本語 and Español.
  • Private by design — no Loomscreen account or usage telemetry. Optional online features contact their respective services.

Editions

Lite Pro
Video / Web / Apple Aerials, playlists, schedules, overlays, shortcuts ✅ ✅
Wallpaper Engine scene rendering & import — ✅
Steam Workshop browse & download — ✅
Scene presets (Workshop presets + your own saved values) — ✅
System audio capture for scene and music visual effects — ✅
Adaptive frame rate & per-display render threads — ✅
Sparkle update checks, download and installation ✅ ✅
Music layer, weather widget and saved display schemes ✅ ✅
System Wallpaper video provider (macOS 26+, compatibility-gated) ✅ ✅

Both editions are free and open source. Lite keeps the complete workspace and video, web and Aerials experience while excluding the WPE renderer and Workshop stack. Full matrix: docs/en/lite-vs-pro.md.

Install

  1. Download the latest Loomscreen-x.y.z.dmg from Releases.
  2. Drag Loomscreen.app into /Applications.
  3. Launch it. Releases use Apple Development signing and are not notarized; if macOS refuses to open a manually downloaded copy, verify its published checksum and clear quarantine:
    xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Loomscreen.app
  4. Loomscreen lives in your menu bar; onboarding helps set up your first wallpaper.

For Pro, download Loomscreen-Pro-x.y.z.dmg, install Loomscreen Pro.app, and use "/Applications/Loomscreen Pro.app" in the command above. In-app updates use Sparkle; manual replacement remains available.

Details, permission prompts, and updates: docs/en/install.md · First-run walkthrough: docs/en/quick-start.md

Requirements

  • macOS 14.6 or later
  • Loomscreen (Lite): Apple Silicon or Intel. The Intel slice is built and shipped but has not been tested on an Intel Mac — hardware readings in the monitor board are the most likely thing to come back empty. Reports welcome.
  • Loomscreen Pro: Apple Silicon only. Its Metal scene renderer has never been run on Intel hardware.

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/Paradox07127/macos-wallpaperengine.git
cd macos-wallpaperengine
open LiveWallpaper.xcodeproj

Schemes: LiveWallpaperLite (Lite) · LiveWallpaper (Pro). Shipping and CI use Xcode 27.0. Start validation with make verify; the complete release-candidate gate runs separately. Architecture · Requirements and test gates: docs/en/building.md.

Contributing & license

Issues and PRs welcome — see docs/CONTRIBUTING.md for what every PR is asked to clear. Security issues go through docs/SECURITY.md, not the public tracker. For bug reports, use Settings → About → Report a Bug in the app; it pre-fills diagnostics.

MIT (LICENSE) — the whole repository, including Pro-only modules.

Third-party software

The vendored code under Packages/LiveWallpaperProWPE/Sources/{CFreeType,CHarfBuzz,CWPESDF/vendor/msdfgen} keeps its own license (FreeType License, Old MIT, MIT). Both apps bundle Sparkle's license; Loomscreen Pro also bundles the FreeType, HarfBuzz, msdfgen and shader-toolchain notices. ThirdPartyNotices/ lists each component.

Portions of this software are copyright © 2026 The FreeType Project (https://freetype.org). All rights reserved.

About

Native Metal renderer for Wallpaper Engine scenes on macOS: particle systems, puppet warp, audio-reactive shaders, and per-display render threads.

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