Random Twitter Background

The purpose of this example is to add a random new banner to your account kind of like Bing images desktop. We can generate from a folder, from Bing, or from Unsplash.

If you'd like this to run automatically, you could add the script to a crontab. Here's an example of running it daily at 8am.

0 8 * * * php index.php

Install Dependencies

Require dotenv and twitteroauth dependencies with composer:

composer install

Twitter Setup

Create an application on Twitter by going to:

https://developer.twitter.com/en/apps

Generate a READ/WRITE token from the "Keys and Tokens" tab. Take those four values and put them in an .env file as per the example in .env.example

Add Images

Add the images you want to randomize into the image/ folder.

If you'd prefer to use an automatic image from Unsplash, go into your .env file and change IMAGE_SOURCE to "unsplash". You can set comma delimited search parameters using UNSPLASH_TERMS, like: "city,night"

Run Script

You should have PHP installed on your machine with fairly basic capabilities.

php index.php

Check Twitter

You should immediately see a new banner.