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Library and Installed
The Installed tab is your wallpaper library: every wallpaper in your storage folder, shown as a grid with filters on the left and a Details panel on the right. This page covers browsing, filtering, searching, the Details panel, resetting properties and deleting.
The toolbar holds five tabs: Installed, Discover, Workshop, Downloads and Playlists. Its buttons show or hide the filter sidebar and the Details panel, open Displays (Display Settings) and Settings.
Tip
Closing the main window puts it into a power-saving state ("Power Saving Mode, Sleeping..."): its contents are torn down while the wallpapers keep playing. Reopen it from the Dock or the menu bar.
Installed lists what Wallpaper Engine lists: items whose project.json type is scene, video, web or application.
-
Asset packs (Workshop items with
"category": "Asset"and no type) and items downloaded only as another wallpaper's dependency stay on disk, where wallpapers can use them, but are not listed. Downloading such an item yourself lists it. - Application wallpapers are listed (as in WE) but cannot play.
| Action | How |
|---|---|
| Select and inspect | Click a tile |
| Add to or remove from the selection | ⌘-click or ⌃-click |
| Select a range | ⇧-click |
| Open the preview window | Double-click |
| Change tile size | Right-click the background › View › Icon Size: Small, Medium, Large or XL |
| Open the folder | Right-click › Open in Finder, or the background's Open All in Finder |
| Create a playlist from the selection | Create Playlist under the grid |
Each tile shows its preview (animated GIF previews play while the app is active; in Low Power Mode only the tile under the pointer plays), its title and its tags. The wallpaper on screen is outlined. A tile with a warning triangle was flagged by safe restart (see Troubleshooting). The grid is paged to fit the window.
- Add to Playlist › (the selection, or this tile; "Create a playlist first" if you have none)
- Unsubscribe / Unsubscribe Selected (N)
- Add to Favorites / Remove from Favorites
- Open in Workshop (Workshop items)
- Related Wallpapers ›: Browse All by the author, and Browse Presets (Workshop items)
- Report… opens the item's Workshop page, where you can report it to Steam
- Export for Android…
- Open in Finder
- The search field matches the title, type, description, tags, Workshop ID and folder name.
- Sort By: Name, Rating, File Size or Date Downloaded. The direction button toggles Ascending/Descending. Both are remembered.
- Refresh rescans the library.
Show the filter sidebar with the toolbar button or View › Show Filter Results (⌃⌘S). Reset Filters clears everything. Every choice is remembered.
| Section | Options | How it matches |
|---|---|---|
| Show Only | Approved, My Favourites, Mobile Compatible, Audio Responsive, Customizable | Narrow the list to those wallpapers |
| Type | Scene, Video, Web, Application | Any checked type |
| Category | Wallpaper, Preset | Ordinary wallpapers, or Workshop presets of another wallpaper |
| Age Rating | Everyone, Partial Nudity (Questionable), Mature | Any checked rating; falls back to the rating tag when project.json has none |
| Resolution | Groups for Widescreen, Ultra Widescreen, Dual Monitor, Triple Monitor, Portrait, and other resolutions, each with All/None | A wallpaper matches when one of its tags is a checked resolution |
| Tags | WE's genres (Abstract, Anime, Landscape, Nature, Pixel art, Sci-Fi, …) with All/None | Any checked genre (OR) |
| Source | Shown but not yet active | – |
Within a group, any checked option matches. Groups narrow the results together. A group with everything checked doesn't filter; one with nothing checked matches nothing.
Note
The tags come from the wallpaper's project.json and, for Workshop items, from Steam. When project.json has at most one tag, OWE fetches the item's Workshop tags in the background (only if you set a Steam Web API key) and remembers them for offline use. The Workshop tab has an extra Match all (AND) / Match any (OR) toggle for genres; see Steam Workshop.
Select a wallpaper to see it in Details:
-
Preview, title (double-click to rename; Return saves it to
project.json), author (click to see their Workshop items), favourite heart with subscriber count, type and size on disk, and tag pills (hover a tag to remove it, "+" to add one). - Set Wallpaper applies it to the displays selected in Display Settings. Delete (trash) removes it. Scene Editor (Live) opens the Scene Editor (Live). Export for Android… exports it for Wallpaper Engine's Android app. Edit Wallpaper, under the grid, opens the selected wallpaper in the Wallpaper Editor.
- Properties: Age Rating (local wallpapers), Placement (Fill, Fit, Center, Stretch, Zoom); for videos Volume, Video Speed and Audio Speed with a link toggle; for scenes a missing dependencies banner (Download All) and Scene Music with its volume.
- Wallpaper Settings: the properties the author exposed (sliders, checkboxes, lists, text, colours, file and folder pickers), each with an optional Sync to Music and amount. Double-click a slider to reset it.
- User Scene Settings: OWE's own adjustments such as Animation Speed, parallax and user text.
- Your Presets: Save stores the current properties and Scene Editor (Live) edits under a name; Import…, Paste JSON and Import from Wallpaper Engine config.json… bring presets in. Each preset can be Applied, Renamed, Exported, shared (Share JSON…, Copy JSON), Applied to All Wallpapers… or Deleted. Reset returns the properties to their defaults.
Reset asks for confirmation ("Reset Properties", naming the wallpaper and the displays it reaches), then returns every property the panel shows to its default, as Wallpaper Engine's reset does:
- Wallpaper Settings go back to the author's
project.jsonvalues; User Scene Settings to OWE's defaults. - Music sync on a property is dropped, and so are the wallpaper's Scene Editor (Live) edits.
- It resets the displays an edit would reach: all of them while properties are synced, otherwise the selected display(s).
- Video Volume/Speed/Placement, Scene Music and Sync Video to Music keep their values.
The running wallpaper updates at once.
- One wallpaper: the trash button in Details, or Unsubscribe in the context menu. Choose Delete Immediately or Move to Trash.
- Several: select them, then Delete Selected (N) in the toolbar or Unsubscribe Selected (N). Choose Delete All N Immediately or Move All N to Trash.
- Deleting a wallpaper also removes the dependency-only Workshop items nothing else in your library uses (and logs it).
Read more (for developers): Architecture and UI, localization and settings storage