A GTK4 desktop wallpaper manager for Linux with D-Bus integration and slideshow support.

This has been built/tested on Fedora 43 with Niri Window Manager.

The wallpaper daemon runs as a GTK4 application using gtk4-layer-shell to display wallpapers on the background layer. It provides a D-Bus interface for runtime configuration.

Features:

• Slideshow mode with configurable directory
• Configurable refresh interval (default: 30 seconds)
• Two ordering modes: random or sequential
• 19 transition effects between wallpaper changes
• Configurable layer shell layer
• Support for animated/video wallpapers (mp4, webm, mov, avi, mkv)

Configuration:

The daemon reads default settings from ~/.config/org.drewrm.wallpaperd/wallpaperd.toml:

[defaults]
wallpaper_path = ""
refresh_interval = 30
ordering = "sequential"
transition_type = "crossfade"
layer = "background"
allow_animated = false

Layer options:

• background - Background layer (behind normal windows)
• bottom - Bottom layer
• top - Top layer (above normal windows)
• overlay - Overlay layer (always on top)

Transition types available:

• none - Instant switch
• crossfade - Fade between images
• slide_right, slide_left, slide_up, slide_down - Slide animations
• slide_left_right, slide_up_down - Bidirectional slides
• over_up, over_down, over_left, over_right - Overlay animations
• under_up, under_down, under_left, under_right - Underlay animations
• rotate_left, rotate_right, rotate_left_right - Rotation animations

A command-line tool to control the wallpaper daemon via D-Bus.

Usage:

wallpaper-cli <command> [options]

Commands:

Examples:

# Set a static wallpaper
wallpaper-cli path /path/to/image.jpg

# Set a slideshow directory with 30-second interval
wallpaper-cli path /path/to/wallpapers
wallpaper-cli refresh-interval 30
wallpaper-cli ordering random
wallpaper-cli transition-type slide_left
wallpaper-cli layer overlay

# Enable animated/video wallpapers
wallpaper-cli allow-animated true

cargo build --release

Install the binaries to ~/cargo/bin:

cargo install --path .

To run as a systemd service add the following unit file to ~/.config/systemd/user/wallpaperd.service

[Unit]
Description=Wallpaper Daemon for Wayland
PartOf=graphical-session.target
Requires=graphical-session.target
After=graphical-session.target
ConditionEnvironment=WAYLAND_DISPLAY

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=%h/.cargo/bin/wallpaperd
Slice=session.slice
Restart=on-failure

[Install]
WantedBy=greaphical-session.target

Enable the service to start on login:

systemctl --user enable wallpaperd.service
systemctl --user start wallpaperd.service

Note - Only a single instance of the daemon can run at any one time.