How to Back Up and Transfer Your Wallpaper Engine Wallpapers

Your Wallpaper Engine wallpapers are ordinary folders on your hard drive, and you can copy them like any other files. That is worth knowing, because a wallpaper you subscribed to is not really yours until you do. When a creator takes an item down from the Steam Workshop, Steam takes it off your PC too, and there is no undo.

This guide covers the whole thing: where the files actually are, how to copy them somewhere Steam cannot reach, how to put them back on a new Windows PC, and how to open the same backup on a Mac. It takes about ten minutes and you only have to do it once.

Why a backup is worth ten minutes

Wallpaper Engine's own documentation is direct about this:

When wallpapers are deleted from Steam for any reason, Steam will also delete them from your PC. Wallpaper Engine cannot prevent that, but if this is a concern for you, you can make a backup of your wallpapers.

Creators delete Workshop items all the time. Some retire an account, some pull work after a copyright complaint, some just tidy up. Whatever the reason, a subscription is a link to someone else's upload, not a copy you own. The moment the upload goes, so does yours.

There is a second reason in the same document. Steam sometimes decides to re-download every Workshop file it manages, which is a long evening if your library runs to several gigabytes. Having your own copy means you are never waiting on that.

And there is the ordinary reason: you are changing machines. A backup is what you carry across, whether the new machine runs Windows or macOS.

Where Wallpaper Engine keeps your wallpapers

Subscribed Workshop wallpapers are not stored inside Wallpaper Engine. They are stored by Steam, in the folder Steam uses for downloaded Workshop content:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\workshop\content\431960

The number 431960 is Wallpaper Engine's Steam app ID, which is why the folder looks cryptic. Everything Steam downloads for Wallpaper Engine lands under it.

If you installed Steam somewhere else, or you keep a second Steam library on another drive, look for the same tail of that path in your own install location: steamapps\workshop\content\431960. It is worth checking every drive that has a steamapps folder, because a library moved to a fast SSD is a common setup and the wallpapers move with it.

Inside 431960 you will find one numbered subfolder per wallpaper. Those numbers are Steam Workshop IDs, so 2406282996 is the same item as the one at steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2406282996. Open one and you will see a project.json file that holds the title and the name of the preview image, alongside the wallpaper's actual assets.

Wallpapers you built yourself are not in there. Your own creations live in Wallpaper Engine's install directory under steamapps\common\wallpaper_engine\projects, and they need copying separately if you want them.

Making the backup

The backup itself is a copy and nothing more.

1. Open steamapps\workshop\content\431960.
2. Copy the whole 431960 folder to somewhere outside Steam: an external drive, a second internal drive, or a cloud folder. Keep the numbered subfolders exactly as they are.
3. Leave Steam's original copy where it is.

That third step matters more than it looks. Wallpaper Engine's documentation gives an explicit warning about it: do not delete the Workshop folder by hand, because Steam will notice the files are missing and re-download everything. If you want to reclaim the disk space, unsubscribe from the items in Steam and let Steam delete its own files.

When the copy finishes, spot check it. Open three or four of the numbered folders and confirm each one has a project.json and more than just a preview image. A folder containing a lone preview.jpg is a copy that got interrupted, and it is much easier to fix now than a year from now when the original is gone.

Sources: Wallpaper Engine official help, Backup Steam Workshop. Checked 2026-08-24.

Restoring on a new Windows PC

If the new machine also runs Windows, Wallpaper Engine can read a backup directly, without Steam being involved at all. The official method is to place the backup inside Wallpaper Engine's own projects directory:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\wallpaper_engine\projects\backup

Copy your saved 431960 folder in there and rename it to backup, so that each numbered wallpaper folder sits one level inside. Restart the wallpaper browser and the restored wallpapers show up alongside your subscribed ones.

Two things are worth knowing at that point. You will see duplicates for anything you are still subscribed to, and the fix is to unsubscribe in Steam and keep your own copy. And the wallpapers are all that comes across. Playlists, per monitor assignments and the rest of your setup are application settings stored elsewhere in Wallpaper Engine's own folder, so a content backup restores the wallpapers, not the arrangement you had them in.

Opening the same backup on a Mac

This is where a backup earns its keep, because there is no Wallpaper Engine for macOS and there is not going to be one. The developers have said so plainly and repeatedly, which we went through in is Wallpaper Engine coming to macOS. A folder of wallpapers, though, is just a folder of wallpapers, and Vivid Walls reads it natively on Apple Silicon.

Get the folder onto the Mac however you like. A USB stick, an external drive, a cloud folder, or a shared folder over your network all work the same way, because at this point it is ordinary data.

Then, in Vivid Walls:

1. Open the File menu and choose Import Wallpaper Engine Library. The keyboard shortcut is Cmd+Option+Shift+I.
2. Click Select Folder, or Choose Other Folder if it offers you a default path, and point it at your copied folder.
3. Review the list of what was found, then import the ones you want. Everything compatible is selected by default.

You can select a single wallpaper folder or the parent folder holding all of them, so pointing it at your copied 431960 imports the whole library in one pass.

Three things that trip people up

Do not go one folder too high. The importer looks one level down from whatever you select, so choosing 431960 works and choosing its parent content finds nothing at all. If the result comes back empty, this is almost always why.

Dragging a folder onto the window will not work. Drag and drop is for individual media files, an mp4 or a gif you already have. A Wallpaper Engine folder has to come in through the File menu item above. Use the menu and it works first time.

Copy the whole folder, not just the video. If a folder arrives incomplete, the importer lists it as incompatible and names the file that is missing, which is a useful signal that your copy was interrupted rather than a problem with the wallpaper.

What comes across, and what does not

Video, web and scene wallpapers import. Two Wallpaper Engine types do not, and they are listed as incompatible with the reason shown: presets, which are built on Wallpaper Engine's own built in effects rather than being self contained, and application wallpapers, which are Windows executables.

Everything you import is copied into the app's own storage, so once the import finishes you can eject the drive or delete the source folder and nothing breaks. Titles and preview thumbnails come from each folder's project.json, so your library looks like your library rather than a wall of numbers.

One honest caveat on scenes. Most Workshop scenes render correctly and a small number do not yet, usually ones leaning on shader features that are still being worked through. If you hit one, send the Workshop link to support@vividwalls.app and it goes into the queue. Also worth knowing: if an import contains only scene wallpapers, the completion screen may show no counts even though the import worked. Check the library rather than the summary.

If the PC is still around and on the same network

Then you do not need any of this. The free Windows Companion finds your library on the PC and sends it to the Mac over local Wi-Fi with a four character pairing code, no cloud and no account, and it is the faster path by a wide margin. That walkthrough is in how to import your Wallpaper Engine library to Mac.

The folder route in this guide is for the cases the Companion cannot cover: the PC is sold, dead, at a different address, or simply not on your network any more. It also covers the case where you want a copy that outlives all of it.

What a backup does not include

Being clear about the limits, because a backup you trust too much is worse than none:

• Your playlists and monitor layout. Those are application settings, not wallpaper files, and they live elsewhere in Wallpaper Engine's own installation.
• Updates from the creator. Your copy is frozen at the moment you took it. If a creator ships a better version next month, only a live subscription gets it.
• Wallpapers you never subscribed to. Only what has actually downloaded to your PC is on disk to be copied.
• Anything you deleted before making the backup. This is the whole reason to do it sooner rather than later.

The short version

Copy steamapps\workshop\content\431960 somewhere outside Steam and leave the original alone. That single copy protects you from creator deletions, from Steam re-downloading everything, and from losing your library when you change machines. On a new Windows PC it goes into Wallpaper Engine's projects\backup folder. On a Mac it opens in Vivid Walls through File then Import Wallpaper Engine Library, and the scenes render natively on Apple Silicon.

Get Vivid Walls on the Mac App Store

Questions or a wallpaper that does not render right? Reach us at support@vividwalls.app. We read every message.