Settings General

Settings › General, Optimizations, Updates and Privacy

This page covers four Settings tabs: General (startup, language, appearance, macOS integration, theming, the setup assistant, transitions, screenshots, hotkeys and shortcuts), Optimizations (converted wallpapers, displays, video, audio and rendering), Updates and Privacy.

General

Automatic Startup

Option	Default	What it does
Start with macOS	Off	Opens OWE when you log in to your Mac

Basic Setup

Option	What it does
Language	Follow System, or one of 16 languages shown in their own names. A new language takes effect the next time OWE opens; Restart Now does it at once. See Languages.

Appearance

Option	Choices	Default
Theme	Light, Dark, Auto	Auto (follows macOS)

macOS

Option	Default	What it does
Adjust Menu Bar Color	On	While a video or web wallpaper plays, sets the desktop picture to a frame of it, so macOS tints the menu bar to match. Off restores your own picture.
Show Wallpaper on Lock Screen	On	Sets each display's desktop picture to the scene wallpaper's snapshot, so the lock screen shows it. Off restores your own pictures.

Theming

Theme macOS with the Wallpaper's Color (off by default) uses the scheme color of the wallpaper on the main display. Choose what it colors: Menu Bar, Accent Color (the closest of macOS's accent colors, plus a matching highlight color), Tinted Icon Color and Folder Color. Restart the Dock automatically to apply icon and folder colors (or Restart Dock) makes the Dock show a new icon style; your windows stay open. Use the wallpaper's main color when it has no scheme color and Restore on Quit are also here. Your own settings are saved before the first change and put back when an option is turned off.

Setup Assistant

Run Setup Again… opens the setup assistant from its first step.

Transitions

The transition shown when you choose a wallpaper in the library. Each playlist has its own transition in its settings (see Playlists).

Screenshots

Size (Display, 4K or 8K), the Folder (Choose…, Show in Finder) and Take Screenshot, which saves a PNG of the wallpaper on the display under the pointer, without icons or windows. Take Screenshot is also in the menu bar menu and can have a hotkey.

Hotkeys and keyboard shortcuts

Hotkeys work in every app and need no permission; each needs ⌘, ⌥ or ⌃. Keyboard Shortcuts lists the shortcuts of every menu, and Playlists lists the playlists' hotkeys. See Menu bar and keyboard shortcuts.

Optimizations

Converted Wallpapers

Option	What it does
Remove original packages after conversion	Removes a wallpaper's original package once it has rendered from its unpacked files, reported no conversion warnings, and no other wallpaper depends on it
Reclaim Now	Does that immediately and reports how many packages were removed

See Importing wallpapers.

Displays

Option	Default	What it does
Sync properties across displays	Off	Off: a wallpaper on several displays keeps each display's properties, as Wallpaper Engine does. On: one set of properties applies to every display. See Displays and playback rules.

Video

Option	Choices	Default
Video Framework	Apple AVKit, Metal (effects apply to video)	Metal (AVKit on a Mac without a Metal device)

Metal draws video through the scene renderer so effects and music sync apply to it; it needs the Wallpaper Engine assets, and without them videos play through AVKit. Experimental. See Video wallpapers.

Audio

Option	Default	What it does
Audio Output	On	Off silences every wallpaper
Reload when changing output device	On	Reloads the wallpapers and their audio when you switch the sound output
Recording threshold	0	Audio-reactive wallpapers react only to sound at least this loud. 0 reacts to everything, 10 needs about −40 dB.
Media integration support	On	Lets wallpapers read the title, artist and album cover of the music playing now (Now Playing)

Rendering

Option	Default	What it does
Optimise textures	On	Compresses wallpaper images once in the background so they use about a third of the GPU memory
Cheaper shadows	On	Draws shadow maps at half size
Render web wallpapers at standard resolution	Off	Under the Retina or Full render resolution, draws web wallpapers at standard resolution
Draw large glowing particles at half resolution	Off	Large additive particle effects in 2D scenes draw a quarter of the pixels
Process Priority	Normal	Below Normal runs OWE at a lower CPU priority so other apps go first
Pause when VRAM is exhausted	Off	Pauses every wallpaper while the GPU runs out of video memory, and resumes them when memory frees up
Restart after crashing	Off	Opens OWE again if it crashes, at most 3 times in 5 minutes. The wallpaper that was showing stays off until you retry it.

Updates

Open Wallpaper Engine updates itself with Sparkle. Updates are signed, listed on the website (https://openwallpaperengine.app) and downloaded from GitHub Releases; no personal data is sent.

• Update automatically (on by default): checks, downloads and installs updates by itself. An update installs when you quit, when you've been away from the Mac for 10 minutes, or within a day, with a quick relaunch that restores your wallpapers.
• Automatically check for updates (shown when Update automatically is off): checks on its own and asks before installing. Turn it off too and the app never checks unless you ask.
• Receive beta updates (off by default; on by default when the running build is itself a pre-release): also offers pre-releases (vX.Y.Z-alpha.N, -beta.N, -rc.N).
• Last checked and Check Now. Check for Updates… is also in the app menu and the menu bar menu.
• Don't show release notes skips the release notes window after an update.
• The setup assistant's Privacy step has Keep Open Wallpaper Engine up to date automatically.

Builds without the update signing key (Debug and local builds from source) don't check for updates.

Privacy

A short statement of what OWE keeps and contacts, the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy (with the version you confirmed), and Security, which opens the project's GitHub Security tab for reporting a problem privately. See Privacy.

Resetting

Each tab's ⋯ menu, at the bottom of the window, has Restore Defaults of This Tab…, Export Settings… and Import Settings…. Settings › Diagnostics › Reset Config returns every tab's settings to their defaults; see Plugins, Permissions, Diagnostics, About.

Read more (for developers): UI, localization and settings storage