Luviosa is a macOS live wallpaper app I built to make the desktop feel more cinematic, personal, and alive.
I am Shubi, a software engineer and indie app developer. I wanted a native Mac app that lets me quickly pick a beautiful animated wallpaper, apply it to one or more displays, and keep control over the experience from a clean menu bar utility.
Luviosa lets you browse curated live wallpapers and apply them directly to your macOS desktop. The app includes a fullscreen, media-forward interface for discovering wallpapers, plus support for importing your own videos, GIFs, and images.
The goal is simple: make live wallpapers feel native to macOS, fast enough to keep running, and polished enough to enjoy every day.
- Curated live wallpaper library with category rows for Anime, Nature, Cyberpunk, Fantasy, Space, Automotive, Ocean, and more.
- User imports for videos, GIFs, and images.
- Multi-display selection with persistent display preferences.
- Menu bar app mode with no Dock icon.
- Persistent playback preferences for pause behavior, volume, and active wallpaper assignments.
- Favorites tab for saved wallpapers.
- Search across wallpaper titles, subtitles, and tags.
- Full-window animated app backdrop based on the selected wallpaper.
- Wallpaper preview, favorite, and apply controls.
- Native macOS settings panel for displays, playback, and library management.
- Lightweight AVFoundation playback using desktop-level wallpaper windows.
Live wallpapers can make a Mac feel warmer and more expressive, but many wallpaper apps feel cluttered, heavy, or too far away from the macOS design language.
Luviosa is my take on a focused native version: a visual wallpaper browser, a quiet menu bar presence, and enough control to make it useful across real desktop setups.
I wanted the app to feel closer to a media experience than a settings utility. The selected wallpaper becomes the atmosphere of the app itself, while the controls stay simple: browse, favorite, apply, and keep moving.
- Open
Luviosa.xcodeprojin Xcode. - Select the
Luviosascheme. - Build and run the macOS app.
- Choose a wallpaper, select your displays in Settings, and click
Set Wallpaper.
To add your own wallpaper, use the + button in the top-right of the app and import a video, GIF, or image.
Luviosa is a macOS-only app built with SwiftUI, AppKit, AVFoundation, and CoreGraphics.
The app uses desktop-level windows to render live wallpapers behind desktop icons. This requires macOS-specific behavior and is why the app is not sandboxed in the current development configuration.
Apple, Mac, macOS, and App Store are trademarks of Apple Inc. This project is independent and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Apple.
Luviosa is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0.
You can read the full license in LICENSE.