How to Get Animated Wallpapers on Mac

macOS doesn't market "animated wallpaper" as a feature the way Windows does, so the honest first step is figuring out what's actually available. There are more options than most searches turn up, ranging from a free setting hiding in System Settings to a full engine that runs an existing Wallpaper Engine library. This is a straight comparison of what each one actually does, what it costs, and where it falls short, including the free options, since those are worth trying first if all you want is something pretty on your desktop.

The quick list

• Screen Saver as Wallpaper (built into macOS Sonoma and later): free, uses Apple's own screen savers as a live background
• Plash: free and open source, turns a webpage, GIF, or hosted video into a live wallpaper
• Backdrop: a curated library of video-loop wallpapers, subscription pricing with lifetime tiers
• Wallper: video-loop wallpapers, one-time purchase
• Vivid Walls: runs real Wallpaper Engine scene wallpapers natively, plus video, web, and GIF wallpapers, one-time purchase

Option 1: the free built-in trick most people miss

Since macOS Sonoma, any screen saver can double as your live wallpaper. Open System Settings → Screen Saver, pick one (Apple's Aerial and Landscape screen savers are the best-looking built-in options: real aerial footage of cities, coastlines, and countryside), and toggle Show as Wallpaper near the bottom of the panel. Your desktop background becomes that looping footage, live, all the time, not just when the screen is idle.

It costs nothing and needs no installation, which makes it the right first stop if you just want something that moves. The catalog is limited to Apple's own footage though, there's no way to point it at your own video or a custom scene, and because it's rendering continuously it uses more battery and GPU than a static wallpaper would.

Option 2: Plash, for a DIY web or video wallpaper

Plash is a free, open-source Mac app that displays any web page as your desktop background, including pages that host a looping video or an animated GIF. It's a solid choice if you already have a specific video file, GIF, or interactive web page in mind and don't mind pointing the app at a URL yourself. A sandboxed build is also available on the Mac App Store for those who prefer installing from there.

The tradeoff is that Plash is a display layer, not a content library. It doesn't come with wallpapers of its own, so you're responsible for finding or hosting whatever you want to show. That's fine if you're comfortable with that kind of setup, less fine if you want to browse a catalog and click one.

Option 3 and 4: dedicated video-wallpaper apps

Backdrop ships a curated library of high-quality video-loop wallpapers with an easy browsing interface. It looks polished and is simple to use, priced as a subscription with lifetime tiers also on offer. Wallper covers similar ground, video loops as wallpaper, for a one-time $14.99 purchase instead of a subscription. Neither reads Wallpaper Engine's scene file format, so if you're coming from a Windows machine with an existing Workshop library, both are a dead end for that specific collection, even though they're perfectly good apps for video loops on their own.

Option 5: Vivid Walls, for the biggest catalog

The largest source of animated desktop wallpapers anywhere isn't a Mac app at all, it's the Wallpaper Engine Workshop on Steam, a catalog that has grown for years and covers everything from simple particle loops to full interactive scenes with audio-reactive elements and animated characters. It's Windows-only. Vivid Walls is a Mac app that runs that same scene file format natively on macOS, so a Wallpaper Engine library isn't locked to Windows anymore.

If you already own Wallpaper Engine on a PC, Vivid Walls' free Windows Companion app reads your Steam library and transfers it to your Mac over local Wi-Fi with a 4-character pairing code, no cloud upload, no account. Past the scene format, Vivid Walls also plays video wallpapers, web-based wallpapers, and GIF wallpapers directly, and it can export the current wallpaper to your lock screen and set a different wallpaper per monitor. It's a one-time $9.99 purchase, no subscription, and requires macOS 14.0 or later.

One caveat: the Workshop catalog spans years of unusual and custom-built scenes, and not every scene renders correctly yet. Specific ones that do not can be reported to support@vividwalls.app with the Workshop link and get looked at directly.

Comparing all five

Which one should you actually pick

If you want something that moves and costs nothing, turn on Screen Saver as Wallpaper first, it takes thirty seconds and needs no download. If you have a specific video or web page you want as your background, Plash is free and built for exactly that. If you want a big curated library and don't mind a subscription, Backdrop is a reasonable, polished choice. If you want the same thing without a subscription, Wallper covers it for video loops specifically. And if you already have (or want access to) the enormous Wallpaper Engine Workshop catalog, or you want scene, video, web, and GIF formats all in one app without a recurring charge, Vivid Walls is built for that.

Once you have picked one, here is the setup

Every option above is a few minutes of work at most, and two of them cover almost everyone. Here is the free one and the paid one, start to finish.

The free route, using a screen saver as your wallpaper

1. Open System Settings → Screen Saver.
2. Pick a screen saver. Apple's Aerial and Landscape sets are the best-looking built-in options.
3. Turn on Show as Wallpaper near the bottom of the panel.

Your desktop is now that looping footage. Nothing to install and nothing to pay for. The trade-off is that you are limited to Apple's own footage, there is no way to point it at your own video or a custom scene, and continuous rendering costs more battery than a static image.

The Vivid Walls route, from download to a moving desktop

1. Install Vivid Walls from the Mac App Store. It is a one-time $9.99 purchase and needs an Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or later) running macOS 14 or later.
2. Launch it. Eight animated 1080p wallpapers load into your library the first time you open the app: City Lights, Aurora Scene, Beach Scene, Cherry Blossom, Fireplace HD, Nebula Journey, Rainy Street and Dense Forest. You do not need a Windows PC, a Steam account or a single download to get a moving desktop running.
3. Click a wallpaper, then click Apply to Desktop.
4. On more than one monitor, drag a wallpaper from the library onto a display in the sidebar to assign it to that screen.
5. Only if you already own Wallpaper Engine on a PC: run the free Windows Companion, put both machines on the same Wi-Fi network, press Cmd+Shift+P on the Mac, and type the 4-character code the Companion shows. Your scenes copy across your own network.

Step 5 is the one people assume is required. It is not. The first four steps stand on their own, and the import is there for the case where a library already exists on a PC.

Install Vivid Walls on the Mac App Store →

Coming from an existing Wallpaper Engine library on Windows? The step-by-step transfer guide covers moving it over screen by screen. Questions about any of this? Reach us at support@vividwalls.app. We read every message.