With the Steam application Wallpaper Engine, the team behind the software released a great way for Windows to use animated wallpapers on their own desktop. You can choose backgrounds from a huge selection of animated images in various categories, or simply create them yourself.
The program currently costs 3.99$ in the Steam Store (as of December 2022) and has since been supplemented with a practical Android app. A relatively low price for a great design of your own background. There are also free versions, which have found their way onto the Internet. However, it is not advisable to use these, since they do not come from the official developer and you cannot fall back on the wallpapers of the Steam Workshop when using them.
Note: The Wallpaper Engine application offers extensive screen support and is performance optimized. Accordingly, little system performance is used when displaying the animated background. When using other applications such as the Internet browser or playing video games, the live wallpaper can be paused on demand or automatically set, freeing up more resources.
Wallpaper Engine: How to use the application
The installation of the Wallpaper Engine application is very straightforward. In the Steam application or browser, open the Steam page and navigate to the Store. There you will find the application and buy it after adding it to your shopping cart. The Wallpaper Engine is available for Windows 7 to Windows 11 and is constantly adapted when new Windows versions are released and regularly provided with updates by the developer. The download and the installation take little time, since the program is only about 500 MB in size.
After the installation, you open the application and can choose wallpapers from the different categories, which you can set as animated wallpaper after a short download time. In addition to the animations, the creator can also choose to underlay these with sound. However, music playback can also be turned off with a click if necessary.
Wallpaper Engine: How to create your own background
In addition to animated backgrounds from the community, Wallpaper Engine also lets you create your own wallpapers. To do this, open the wallpaper editor of the application and there you can animate a video clip or image with effects. To do this, click on the corresponding button in the lower left area of the program. Alternatively, you can simply drag and drop the image or video file into the program. After selecting the file you now define a project name and a color scheme. Later in the editing process, this selection can be adjusted.
In the editor window, a layer selection including further options now appears on the right side, the selected image/video in the middle and the respective layer adjustment options on the right side. You can zoom in and out of the project using the mouse wheel.
With the different layers you can now choose in the categories between various effects like fire, smoke, water, rain and many more and add them to the pictures or video. By clicking on the respective effect on the right side of the application you can further edit it and change it. You can choose from options such as color, movement speed or repetition rate. The selected effect now appears in the center of the application. Using the selection points at the edge of the animation, it can be moved, reduced or enlarged within the project with a click. The changes happen during the entire editing time in live mode.
The editor of the wallpaper engine already comes with a large selection of effects at the beginning. Additional effects can also be downloaded and used in the Steam Workshop. You can find them via the “Search workshop” function. By the way, the own animated background image can be accompanied by music as well as effects.
After finishing your own wallpaper, save it, select it in your Wallpaper Engine library and set it as your background. You can also share your animated wallpaper with the community. To do this, navigate to “Workshop” and share the wallpaper with it. Make sure to include a title, a genre, and a meaningful description. In addition to different categories, the application also has a search function with which the animations can be searched. This also includes the download count or image rating of the application users.
Below you will find a video tutorial that shows you how to create your own animated wallpapers.
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