Web Wallpapers

Web wallpapers

Web wallpapers are HTML pages, often with WebGL, played in WebKit, or in Chromium when the optional Chromium web engine plugin is installed (Settings › Plugins) and a wallpaper needs it. Open Wallpaper Engine gives them Wallpaper Engine's web API, so pages that react to their properties, to audio and to the music playing work as their authors intended.

What works

Feature	Details
Local files	Pages load their own textures and assets from the wallpaper folder, so WebGL wallpapers don't render grey
User properties	Delivered through window.wallpaperPropertyListener (applyUserProperties), at load and when you change them in Details
Audio	window.wallpaperRegisterAudioListener receives 128 values (64 left, then 64 right, each 0…1) about 30 times a second
Now Playing	The media listeners (wallpaperRegisterMediaStatusListener, …PropertiesListener, …ThumbnailListener, …PlaybackListener, …TimelineListener) receive the current track and state when Media integration support is on; the live session needs macOS 15.4 or later
Pause	Pages are told when they are paused (setPaused) and have their media suspended
External embeds	Pages may embed online content such as YouTube or Vimeo
Compatibility patches	Wallpaper Engine's own per-item compatibility patches (from its assets) are applied to the pages they are written for

Audio needs the System Audio Recording permission (Screen & System Audio Recording before macOS 14.2).

Several displays

A web page can only be in one window, so each display runs its own copy of the page. Only the page on the wallpaper's audible display plays sound; the others are muted.

Caution

A web wallpaper is a web page, and may load its own online content. Opening an external web page as a wallpaper shows a malware warning first. See Importing wallpapers and Privacy.

Read more (for developers): Video and web internals