WinSpotlightGNOME

A utility for automatically downloading the Bing photo of the day, and setting it as your desktop background in GNOME. Modified from my own tool for doing the same thing on KDE. The name comes from the fact that this utility originally downloaded Windows Spotlight images, however the API for that service is private, and the endpoint appears to have changed, so unfortunately it is no longer possible for me to fetch images from that source.

This project is specifically for Linux systems using systemd and running GNOME, such as Ubuntu, Manjaro GNOME, or Fedora Workstation. However, with a little work, it could easily be modified to work with other desktop environments, or with an alternative to systemd timers such as cron.

Dependencies

• Bash (may work with other shells, but this has not been tested)
• cURL (for sending an http request to the Spotlight API)
• Jq (for parsing JSON returned by the API)

Installation

Using the Debian Package (Recommended)

If you're on Debian, Ubuntu, or any of their derivatives, you can use the provided debian package to install the utility:

1. Download the latest .deb file from the releases page.
2. Install the .deb package using your utility of choice (double-clicking the download works most of the time, otherwise google it)
3. Run the following commands in a terminal window:

   systemctl --user daemon-reload
   systemctl --user enable winspotlightgnome.timer
   systemctl --user start winspotlightgnome.timer
   

Installing Manually

1. Clone or download this repo.
2. Open a terminal and cd into the repo folder that you downloaded.
3. Make the winspotlightgnome script executable:

   chmod +x winspotlightgnome
   

4. Copy the winspotlightgnome script to the opt folder on your system:

   sudo cp winspotlightgnome /opt/
   

5. Copy the WinSpotlightGNOME .service and .timer files to the systemd user unit directory:

   sudo cp winspotlightgnome.service winspotlightgnome.timer /usr/lib/systemd/user/
   

6. Reload the systemd user daemon:

   systemctl --user daemon-reload
   

7. Enable and start the WinSpotlightgnome systemd timer

   systemctl --user enable winspotlightgnome.timer
   systemctl --user start winspotlightgnome.timer
   

Configuration

The following options can be changed by modifying the winspotlightgnome script, changing the various variables at the top of the file:

locale

An option sent to the Bing API to determine which photos are downloaded. If desired, you should change this to your current locale (i.e. en-US, en-CA, etc.).

imgPath

The path where images downloaded by the utility will be stored.

deleteImagesAfterNumDays

When the utility runs, all images as old or older than the number of days specified here will be deleted from the directory specified previously. If the value specified is less than or equal to 0, images will be preserved indefinitely.

setDesktop

If set to yes, the desktop background will be changed when the utility downloads a new image.

Updates

To update the utility, replace all of the files that have changed since the last version (or just replace them all, much easier) and run the following commands:

systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user reenable winspotlightgnome.timer