How do you choose a desktop wallpaper?
I've always found a fresh desktop wallpaper now and then is a good way to stop your PC feeling stale, and keeps me enthusiastic/more productive.
That said, I always have a hard time finding one when the time comes.
Unsplash seems like a good resource, but can feel so impersonal just having a nice picture of some mountains or a field. I have some friends who I know just rock whatever the default wallpaper for the OS is -- I can't verbalize why but something that feels tailored, or an image that brings me some joy, makes me much more comfortable using the computer.
Unfortunately the popular spots online I'm aware of for sharing wallpapers tend to lean toward certain subsets of interests (such as contemporary geek culture and/or lewd anime women) which you may or may not be into.
I've toyed with the idea of just having a solid colour to avoid any kind of decision fatigue, but it feels like staring at a wall - it's nice to have something with some depth behind all the flat windows.
Curious what others here on tildes use for their wallpaper, how often they change it, and where they might source a new one.
Wallpaper Engine on Steam.
You can filter out what you don't like and search for the niche things that you do.
A month ago I was into a nuclear energy kick so i found a loop of real fission reactor's boot up sequence.
Now i'm on a sci-fi kick and have an Elite Dangerous space station spinning next to a planet.
I'd say it's some of the best software i've spent money on.
Yes, I decided to buy the WE when it was on sale and I did not regret it for a second. There are a lot of themes to choose from and you can find something for almost every niche subject (you only have to know what to search for).
My favourite are currently 2 crows sitting on a tree, observing their surroundings.
Also the moonlight sonata playing with a full moon over a large body of water, which is perfect for taking a short and relaxing break.
I checked it out after reading yours and @GoodBob's comments.
This is everything I didn't know I wanted. It even takes advantage of Razer Chroma to get my keyboard colours to match! I've been really impressed by this software, I'm glad I finally checked it out thanks to you two.
I make them. Since I use various operating systems (Windows, mixed linux distros), I usually just theme them around the system it's going on. I'm not a graphic designer or anything, but I like the idea of making something I'm going to be looking at often. If I change my Linux desktop theme, I can easily just make a new one, or modify the current one, to have the background match my panel or whatever.
SimpleDesktops is also a good source for me. They require all submissions to be flat and undistracting. The images are simple enough that tweaking them to match a specific theme or something is easy to do in GIMP, as well. I've got some that are large pattern-based wallpapers that I've made transparent to change the background color on, for example.
I make mine as well. There are a number of really simple graphics algorithms that can produce some really neat images. Things like fractals, ray tracers, aperiodic tilings, L-systems, etc. I sometimes implement these things just to learn how they work, and then discover they produce interesting images I can use for my desktop.
I also use photos I've taken on various trips. These can be meaningful or just pretty. Whatever floats your boat.
Edited to add: I also have mine auto-rotate once an hour, similar to what others have mentioned.
Oh, that simple desktops link is great, thanks for sharing it!
I just use one of the sunsets that came with desktop Ubuntu several years ago. I customized my Plasma color theme around it, so that's the reason I haven't changed it.
I used to use hi-res NASA photos. The most recent Jupiter flyby pics are pretty and look really great on high DPI screens: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/juno/images/index.html
I too use hi-res NASA photos on occasion, even thought as my other comment notes -- I've switched to using Tabliss to manually scrape stuff I like from Unsplash. Those Jupiter pictures are beautiful, thank you!
I'm a big fan of solid colors. A shade of blue, a shade of green, a dark red for a week or two.
It really does something about the whole feel of the desktop. Always a different color on a work machine from a home machine.
ArtStation is great if you want to go into the more artsy direction. Currently I have a background by this lady and I think it's gorgous.
Oh I love Aenami and I have also used a lot of her pictures for wallpapers. I'm currently finding mine on /r/backgroundart
Those are incredible. Thank you for posting them!
I use usplash lmao. There's like one or two other websites that are like usplash that I'll crawl through for pictures. On my work desktop, I have a folder of succulent/plant images that it rotates through. I usually just consider the aesthetic. Or, if I find an artist I like, I'll see how high res of an image I can get from them and use that as my background (unless there isn't a high enough resolution available). My personal desktop is Valley of the Shadows by Eric Bowman. I really enjoy his work, it has a very nice look to it.
Or, I'll look through subreddits I like, like r/adobeillustrator usually has some good stuff and is generally uploaded at a pretty high quality. It really depends on what I'm in the mood for tbh.
Yesss. I too use Unsplash and they're beautiful. Tabliss is a really good way of finding them, you can hit the attribution link on the bottom right to go to their page to download them.
all of my desktops are just lines -- https://imgur.com/a/y4tBdZg
The only bit of desktop I ever see are the gaps between windows. Having a photo is pointless, so I just went with these. With MacOS it rotates every hour.
I really don't change my wallpaper, it's been Bliss or (rarely) a hue-shifted variant of it since 2018 or so, on all devices including my smartphone. It makes me chuckle internally a bit every time i see it, and it really is a damn good wallpaper.
Ha! You just inspired me to change my wallpaper (which was previously a shot of the water imagery used in The Master) to Bliss! A link to the original image file, if anyone is interested.
Bliss since my first XP machine in 2004.
I dabbled with some novel wallpaper setups when I finally made the upgrade to dual monitors, but eventually I always came back to Bliss.
I use photos I've taken, I try to take a picture for each season but last autumn/winter was so grim I kept the nice cheery summer one (by all means help yourselves if you like the image). I must go out and take some spring pictures soon, now the blossom is starting to show.
I have a folder of, at present, 345 images that rotate on an hourly basis (Win10) that I've found across the internet over various years. I resize them to fit my display as needed. Some were made to be wallpaper, others are great photographs (or occasionally renders) of cars, humorous scenes, or just things that I liked that were large enough they could be wallpaper or resized/cropped to fit.
I have a big collection (dozens? Maybe over 100? Haven't counted) of wallpaper images I like, and I have KDE rotate every 8 hours (3 a day). I have 3 monitors (not all of them in use all the time), and each gets its own image from the collection, each rotates on the same interval. So, with this setup, I don't have to feel anxious about picking just one very good/best image. I like almost all of them in the collection, and every morning, afternoon, night, I get a nice little hit of pleasantness as I'm presented another image.
I set my background to slideshow (changes every minute) and have it pull from a folder where I've saved images I've run across that I find interesting. When I first set it up, I populated the folder with paintings I found doing image searches of alien landscapes. Now it has all kinds of things in it, and I like that I never know what's going to show up. I have photos from National Geographic and NASA, paintings of local places that were posted in my local subreddit, fanart. historical photos of places I've lived, photos of animals I've loved who have passed, native art, and so much more. I've made a second folder where retired images go when I have grown tired of them or they contrast poorly with my desktop icons, but I'm not yet ready to let them go.
I submit a discussion before, maybe some people there put their website, I can't remember.
Anyway, Now I use blank grey-ish wallpaper, I used to put wallpaper from wall haven and /r/Amoledbackgrounds, although I don't have amoled screen.
Whenever I see an appropriately big wallpaper I like I add it to a folder that I have cycling always. I have 113 currently. I try to choose ones that have something interesting to say about them, art from a game/TV show I liked, interesting moments in history/science/math. it can be a good conversation starter.
Always solid black.
I usually find my wallpapers on various art-related subreddits. I've been really into vaporwave recently, so I've gotten a lot of wallpapers from those subreddits. I use wallpaper engine to put them on my various monitors, even if they aren't animated.
If you're on Linux, you might like a program called Variety.
It allows you to automate wallpaper switching in lots of ways. It's been a long time since I last used it though, so I'm not sure if it's still a valid option.
I usually make my own, available here: https://www.deviantart.com/apostolique.
Right now though I'm working on my game and using the concept image done by Domen.
I usually change my wallpaper whenever I happen across a good one that I like. I don't see it expect when just turning on or turning off my computer, so it doesn't really occur to me otherwise. Right now I'm using wavey wallpapers.
This is an issue I'm having. I use to do a lot of wallpaper collecting, but with computers being more and more suited for always on (or on + suspend), honestly wallpapers just don't come up much for me on personal computers anymore. I leave my Gnome and Windows computers on the default wallpapers, because tbh I legitimately see about 5 seconds of their wallpapers per month.
I do try and set fresh wallpapers for my Mac, because I use mission control and spaces consistently to navigate windows there, so I do see it flashed a good bit per day.
I use 11 desktops, so windows covering my wallpapers is not something that happens the majority of the time. If you use one desktop, naturally, your windows are going to cover the desktop nearly all the time.
On Windows I use John's Background Switcher
https://johnsad.ventures/software/backgroundswitcher/windows/
I then use unsplash or flickr
I save the ones that I like from Brave Browser and Microsoft Edge
I'm a sucker for high contrast, abstract, paint desktops. This is what I mean by "paint desktop":
I look for one that goes well with the colorscheme i'm using at the moment. This is what i have right now.