Wallutils

• Detect monitor resolutions and set the desktop wallpaper, for any window manager (please file an issue if your window manager is not supported yet).
• Supports GNOME timed wallpapers, and includes a utility that can run an event loop for changing them (also supports cross fading).
• Introduces a new file format for timed wallpapers: The Simple Timed Wallpaper format: Markdown | PDF.
• GNOME timed wallpapers can be converted to the Simple Timed Wallpaper format with the xml2stw utility.
• macOS dynamic wallpapers (in the HEIF format with the .heic extension) can be installed with heic-install and used with lstimed and settimed. This extracts the metadata with heic2stw (only timing information, not the azimuth and elevation for the sun, yet) and extracts the images with convert that comes with ImageMagick.

Timed Wallpapers

The Mojave timed wallpaper and other timed wallpapers can be set with the settimed command, and will cross fade from image to image as the day progresses:

Note that some window managers makes it hard to achieve smooth switches of desktop backgrounds, while others makes it easy.

Included utilities

• getdpi, for retrieving the average DPI, for all monitors (use -b to see the DPI both horizontally and vertically).
• lscollection, for listing installed wallpaper collections (use -l for also listing paths and collection names).
• timedinfo, for showing more information about installed timed wallpapers.
• lsmon lists the connected monitors and resolutions that are discovered by the current WM/DE (use -d for also listing DPI).
• lstimed for listing installed timed wallpapers (use -l for also listing paths).
• lswallpaper, for listing all installed wallpapers (use -l and -s to list more information).
• setcollection, for setting a suitable (in terms of resolution) wallpaper from a wallpaper collection.
• setrandom, for setting a random wallpaper.
• settimed, for setting timed wallpapers (will continue to run, to handle time events). (This utility has recently been refactored and needs more testing).
• setwallpaper can be used for setting a wallpaper (works both over X and the Wayland protocol).
• wayinfo shows detailed information about the connected monitors, via Wayland.
• xinfo shows detailed information about the current X setup.
• xml2stw for converting GNOME timed wallpapers to the Simple Timed Wallpaper format.
• heic2stw for extracting the timing information from macOS dynamic wallpapers (.heic files) to the Simple Timed Wallpaper format.
• vram for finding the minimum amount of VRAM available for non-integrated GPUs (use -l to list the bus ID, a description and available VRAM for each GPU).

Included scripts

• heic-install for installing a macOS dynamic wallpaper to /usr/share/backgrounds using both ImageMagick convert and heic2stw.

Example use of the lsmon utility

$ lsmon
0: 1920x1200
1: 1920x1200
2: 1920x1200

Installing wallutils

Arch Linux

pacman -S wallutils

Fedora

With sudo, or as root, install the required dependencies:

sudo dnf update
sudo dnf install https://mirrors.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm
sudo dnf install git golang ImageMagick libXcursor-devel libXmu-devel xorg-x11-xbitmaps libheif-devel wayland-devel

As a user, clone the repository and build the utilities:

git clone https://github.com/xyproto/wallutils
cd wallutils
make

Then with sudo, or as root, install the utilities:

sudo make PREFIX=/usr/local install

Debian 11

With sudo, or as root, install the required dependencies:

sudo apt install git golang imagemagick libx11-dev libxcursor-dev libxmu-dev libwayland-dev libxpm-dev xbitmaps libxmu-headers libheif-dev make

As a user, clone the repository and build the utilities:

git clone https://github.com/xyproto/wallutils
cd wallutils
make

Then with sudo, or as root, install the utilities:

sudo make PREFIX=/usr/local install

Installing a single utility

Using Go 1.17 or later, install ie. the getdpi utility:

go install github.com/xyproto/wallutils/cmd/getdpi@latest

Wayland or X only

The executables related to X can be removed after building if you only wish to keep the Wayland-related functionality. And the same for Wayland.

Example use of settimed

settimed mojave-timed

Example use of setwallpaper

setwallpaper /path/to/background/image.png

Example use of setrandom

setrandom /usr/share/pixmaps

Example use of the Go package

Retrieve monitor resolution(s)

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "os"

    "github.com/xyproto/wallutils"
)

func main() {
    // Retrieve a slice of Monitor structs, or exit with an error
    monitors, err := wallutils.Monitors()
    if err != nil {
        fmt.Fprintf(os.Stderr, "%s\n", err)
        os.Exit(1)
    }
    // For every monitor, output the ID, width and height
    for _, monitor := range monitors {
        fmt.Printf("%d: %dx%d\n", monitor.ID, monitor.Width, monitor.Height)
    }
}

Change the wallpaper

fmt.Println("Setting background image to: " + imageFilename)
if err := wallutils.SetWallpaper(imageFilename); err != nil {
    return err
}

Build requirements

• Go 1.11 or later. 1.17 or later is recommended.
• A working C compiler (tested with GCC 8.2.1).
• Header files for Wayland and X.
• libheif for heic2stw and heic-install.

Runtime requirements

• libwayland-client.so, for Wayland support.
• libX11.so, for X support.
• libheif.so for HEIF/.heic image support.

It is also possible to build with make static, to only build the utilities that does not depend on any of the above .so files, as statically compiled ELF executables.

• swaybg and pkill for Wayland-based window managers like Labwc.

The vram utility depends on lspci (from pciutils) and also nvidia-smi for NVIDIA GPUs.

Wallpaper collections

The XML format from GNOME for specifying wallpaper collections is not yet supported (and I'm not sure if it's needed). Creating a directory with images where the filename of the images specify the resolution (like wallpaper_5639x3561.jpg) is enough for lscollection to recognize it as a collection (if the directory is placed in /usr/share/backgrounds or /usr/share/wallpapers).

Refreshing the wallpaper after waking from sleep

Send the USR1 signal to the settimed process:

pkill settimed -USR1

This should refresh the wallpaper.

A note about i3

• When using wallutils together with i3, it works best with also having feh and imlib2 installed.

Setting a wallpaper per monitor

• Setting a wallpaper per monitor is not supported, yet. Currently, a wallpaper is set for all monitors.

General info

• Author: Alexander F. Rødseth <xyproto@archlinux.org>
• License: BSD-3
• Version: 5.12.9