automatic-wallpaper-changer

This is a script that automatically changes your desktop background with the latest pictures from the subreddit r/Wallpaper

This version is able to download and save all the .jpg and .png pictures that are hosted on Reddit and Imgur, which are saved in the local folder images.

This guide assumes you have Anaconda or Miniconda. If you don't, make sure your python environment has all the packages listed at wallpaper.yml

To use this tool, just clone this repo locally and, from the terminal, use the following commands.

Enter this folder:

cd YOUR/PATH/TO/automatic-wallpaper-changer

Clone the conda environment:

conda env create --file wallpaper.yml

You will then need to manually schedule the execution of script.py every 30 minutes. This script then automatically checks the last time it changed the wallpaper and the last time it downloaded new images from the subreddit.

Follow these steps to schedule the execution of the script on your Linux machine.

First we create the executable for your machine and change its permissions.

Create the file with:

nano cron_run.sh

And copy the following code inside

user=$(whoami)

fl=$(find /proc -maxdepth 2 -user $user -name environ -print -quit)
while [ -z $(grep -z DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS "$fl" | cut -d= -f2- | tr -d '\000' ) ]
do
  fl=$(find /proc -maxdepth 2 -user $user -name environ -newer "$fl" -print -quit)
done

export DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=$(grep -z DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS "$fl" | cut -d= -f2-)

PATH/TO/anaconda3/bin/conda run -n wallpaper python PATH/TO/automatic-wallpaper-changer/script.py

where you have to change the PATH/TO/ parts. The first part of the script makes sure the DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS variable is set before executing the Python script. It would not be necessary if script.pt is run manually, but we need to manually set it because cron only has access to a restricted subset of the system variables. We then make this script executable with

chmod +x ./cron_run.sh

Then you need to modify your crontab to execute cron_run.sh every 10 minutes.

This can be done by using

crontab -e

and adding the following line to the crontab file:

0-59/10 0-23 * * * /home/andreaalf/Documents/Other/automatic-wallpaper-changer/cron_run.sh >> /home/andreaalf/Documents/Other/automatic-wallpaper-changer/cron.log 2>&1

Crontab explanation:

• 0-59/10 means that the script will be run every 10 minutes
• 0-23 means every hour of the day

Done. To check if everything is working correctly, you can check the cron.log file, where the script outputs its stdout and stderr