Requirements

Requirements

What you need to run Open Wallpaper Engine, and what each optional part is for.

Required

Requirement	Details
macOS 14 Sonoma or later	On a Mac with Metal. The app's deployment target is macOS 14.

Optional, per feature

Feature	What you need
Scene wallpapers	Wallpaper Engine's assets, installed from a Steam account that owns Wallpaper Engine, or an existing Wallpaper Engine folder. See Wallpaper Engine assets.
Steam Workshop downloads	A Steam account that owns Wallpaper Engine, and SteamCMD. OWE downloads SteamCMD from Valve for you; Homebrew's steamcmd also works. See SteamCMD and Steam login.
Browsing and searching the Workshop	A free Steam Web API key. See Steam Workshop.
Audio-reactive wallpapers	The System Audio Recording permission (on macOS 14.2 and later; Screen Recording before). See Permissions.
Now Playing (track title, artist, album art in wallpapers)	macOS 15.4 or later for the live session (earlier versions use an older system path), and Media integration support turned on in Settings › Optimizations.
Liquid Glass interface	macOS 26. Earlier versions keep the familiar look.
"Ultra (Display HDR)" output	A display with extended dynamic range (EDR) headroom.

Note

You don't need to install shader tools. WE's GLSL shaders are translated to Metal by a compiler built into the app.

What works without Steam

Video and web wallpapers you already have can be imported and played without Steam or Wallpaper Engine. See Importing wallpapers.

Read more (for developers): Building and running