How to Set a Live Wallpaper on PC (Windows 11 and Mac)

To set a live wallpaper on a PC you need a separate app, because Windows 11 only shows still pictures on the desktop. The free choice is Lively Wallpaper, an open-source app from the Microsoft Store. The paid one is Wallpaper Engine on Steam, with the biggest library of animated wallpapers anywhere. On a Mac, macOS Sonoma and later already include slow-motion aerial wallpapers, no app needed.

Below are the steps for each, what a moving desktop really costs in processor time and battery, and when a still 4K or 5K wallpaper is the better call.

Can Windows 11 play an animated wallpaper by itself?

No. Open Settings, Personalization, Background, and the menu offers four things: Picture, Solid color, Slideshow and Windows spotlight. None of them plays video or GIFs.

The closest built-in option is Slideshow. Point it at a folder and Windows changes the picture every minute, every ten minutes, every half hour, every hour, every six hours or once a day. It is not motion, but a folder of related images that turns over during the day feels alive and costs nothing. Our guide to changing the wallpaper on Windows 11 walks through the menu, including per-monitor wallpapers.

Windows spotlight swaps in a new photo from Microsoft each day. Also still, also free.

How to set a live wallpaper on PC for free: Lively Wallpaper

Lively Wallpaper is free, open source and runs on Windows 10 and 11. It can play video files, GIFs and even web pages as the desktop background.

1. Install Lively Wallpaper from the Microsoft Store, or from the project's GitHub releases page.
2. Open it. The library shows a few sample wallpapers; click one to apply it straight away.
3. To use your own clip, click the plus button and choose a video file or a GIF, or paste a web address.
4. If you have two monitors, choose which screen gets the wallpaper, or span one across both.
5. Open the performance settings and let Lively pause playback when a game or another full-screen app is running, and when the laptop is on battery if you want to save power.

That is all it takes to make an animated wallpaper from your own video. A short, calm loop works best; a busy clip with cuts turns the desktop into a television.

Wallpaper Engine: the paid option on Steam

Wallpaper Engine is a one-time purchase on Steam, priced at a few dollars and varying by region. It runs on Windows. What you pay for is the library: the Steam Workshop holds a huge number of user-made animated wallpapers, from slow landscapes to anime scenes and audio visualisers, plus an editor to build your own.

1. Buy and install Wallpaper Engine through Steam.
2. Open it and go to the Workshop tab.
3. Find a wallpaper, click Subscribe, and pick it in the installed list.
4. In the settings, choose what happens when another app is maximised or full screen. Pausing there is the single most useful switch.

Workshop items are uploaded by users, so quality varies a lot, and resolution is whatever the creator chose. Check that a wallpaper is actually made for your screen size before you settle on it.

Animated wallpapers on a Mac

Wallpaper Engine and Lively do not run on macOS, but the Mac has its own moving wallpapers. Since macOS Sonoma, System Settings, Wallpaper includes aerial collections such as Landscape, Cityscape, Underwater and Earth. They play in slow motion on the lock screen and as a screen saver, then come to rest as a still image on the desktop once you log in.

The older Dynamic Desktop wallpapers, around since macOS Mojave, do something quieter: the same scene shifts from morning to night light as the day goes on. Beyond that, App Store apps can loop a video or even a web page on the desktop; Plash, for example, is free and shows a website as your background.

For still images, the steps are in our guide to changing the desktop wallpaper on a Mac. Phones are a separate story, covered in live and animated wallpapers on iPhone.

What a live wallpaper costs: processor, graphics and battery

A moving wallpaper is a video or a small 3D scene playing all day. Every frame is decoded or drawn, even when windows cover most of the desktop.

On a desktop PC with a modern graphics card the load from a plain video loop is small, and the pause-on-full-screen setting removes it while you play games. Web and 3D scene wallpapers can cost noticeably more than video, especially those with particles or audio reactions.

A laptop is where it shows. Constant video decoding keeps the graphics chip awake, the fans spin up more often, and battery life drops. If you want a live wallpaper on a laptop, set it to pause on battery and keep the loop short and simple.

The light option: a still 4K or 5K wallpaper

A still wallpaper is drawn once and then costs nothing: no processor time, no graphics load, no battery. That is why most people who try animated wallpapers end up back on a good still image.

Velpaper's catalog is still images, and every desktop wallpaper in it is free. They come at 3840 × 2160 for 4K screens and 5120 × 2880 for 5K, so they stay sharp on anything from a 1080p laptop to a 5K monitor. Our PC wallpaper size guide explains which size suits which screen.

Petrol Current is a smooth deep petrol gradient at 5K, calm enough to sit behind any window. Sage Sun Gallery frames a muted sage wall in a broad off-white arch with one plane of warm sunlight, also at 5K.

Window Cat is a lofi scene with a cat watching a pastel night sky, at 4K; our lofi wallpaper collection has five more like it. Cobalt Soft Horizon and Indigo Silk Flow are deep blue gradients that look rich on a dark taskbar. For a sense of movement without the cost, drop several of them into a folder and use the Windows slideshow.