What Is Open Wallpaper Engine

What is Open Wallpaper Engine?

Open Wallpaper Engine (OWE) is a Mac app that shows animated, interactive wallpapers on your desktop. It reads wallpapers in Wallpaper Engine's own format, so items from the Steam Workshop and wallpapers you make yourself both work.

What it plays

Wallpaper Engine wallpapers are folders with a project.json and their content: a scene.json or scene.pkg with textures, materials and shaders for scenes, a video file, or an HTML page. OWE reads those files directly.

Type	What it is	In OWE
Scene	Layered 2D/3D artwork with effects, particles, text, scripts, lights and sound	Rendered natively with Metal through each wallpaper's original shaders, translated to Metal. See Scene wallpapers.
Video	A looping video file	MP4, MOV and M4V through AVFoundation; WebM through WebKit (or Chromium when that plugin is installed). See Video wallpapers.
Web	An HTML/JavaScript/WebGL page	Played in WebKit, or in the optional Chromium web engine plugin, with WE's web API. See Web wallpapers.
Application	A Windows program	Not supported and never will be: these are Windows executables.

Important

Scene wallpapers need Wallpaper Engine's built-in effects, shaders, materials and fonts. OWE doesn't ship them; it installs them from your own Wallpaper Engine copy on Steam. Video and web wallpapers play without them. See Wallpaper Engine assets.

Highlights

• Faithful rendering. WE's own shaders, effects, particle systems, timelines and SceneScript, implemented from WE's formats rather than look-alikes.
• Every display. A different wallpaper on each display, or one on all of them. A wallpaper shown on several displays is rendered once.
• Steam Workshop inside the app, with WE's filters, automatic dependency downloads, and SteamCMD installed for you.
• Audio-reactive wallpapers driven by the sound your Mac plays, and Now Playing information on macOS 15.4 or later.
• Performance controls: quality presets, FPS, resolution, particle budget and playback rules for battery, fullscreen and other apps.
• A native Mac app with Liquid Glass on macOS 26, a menu bar icon, and 16 interface languages.
• Private: everything stays on your Mac. See Privacy.

Where it comes from

OWE is based on the open-source Open Wallpaper Engine by Haren Chen and MrWindDog. This release, by Deepratna Awale, adds the Metal scene renderer, shader translation, SceneScript, audio, the Workshop overhaul and much more. See Legal and credits.

Next steps

1. Check the Requirements.
2. Install the app.
3. Set up Wallpaper Engine assets for scenes.
4. Get wallpapers from the Steam Workshop or import your own.

Read more (for developers): Architecture