Can You Use Wallpaper Engine Wallpapers Without Wallpaper Engine?

Ask this question anywhere and the usual answer is a flat no. That answer is half right, and the half it gets wrong is the half most people are actually asking about.

Two different things get collapsed into one question here. One is whether the wallpaper files can be played by something other than Wallpaper Engine. The other is whether you can get Workshop wallpapers without owning Wallpaper Engine. The first is yes. The second is no. Almost every short answer online answers the second question and leaves you thinking it settled the first one.

The short answer, both halves

Playing wallpapers you already have: yes. A Wallpaper Engine wallpaper is an ordinary folder of files sitting on your hard drive. It is not a sealed container and it is not locked to the program that downloaded it. Another program that understands the format can open it, and on macOS Vivid Walls does exactly that.

Getting new Workshop wallpapers: no. Steam Workshop items belong to the app they were published for, and subscribing to them requires owning that app on Steam. No third party app changes that, and nothing here is a way around it. If a site offers you Workshop downloads outside Steam, it is redistributing somebody else's work without their permission, and the creators of those wallpapers are the people it hurts.

So the practical question is which situation you are in. There are three, and they have genuinely different answers.

What a Wallpaper Engine wallpaper actually is

This is the part that makes the rest make sense, and it takes one minute.

Subscribed Workshop wallpapers are not kept inside Wallpaper Engine. Steam downloads them, and Steam keeps them in the folder it uses for Workshop content:

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

The 431960 is Wallpaper Engine's Steam app ID, which is why the path looks cryptic. Inside it you get one numbered subfolder per wallpaper, and those numbers are Workshop IDs, so the folder 2406282996 is the same item as the page at steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2406282996.

Open one of those folders and there is no mystery in it. There is a project.json file holding the wallpaper's title and the name of its preview image, and alongside it the wallpaper's actual content. For a video wallpaper that is an mp4. For a scene wallpaper it is the scene data and its assets. Ordinary files, readable by anything that knows the layout.

Wallpapers you made yourself are not in there. They live in Wallpaper Engine's own install directory, under steamapps\common\wallpaper_engine\projects, and they need copying separately.

Situation one: you own it, and you want your wallpapers on a Mac

This is the most common version of the question, and the answer is a clean yes.

Wallpaper Engine is a Windows and Android product. There is no macOS build and the developers have been consistent that there is not going to be one, which we went through in is Wallpaper Engine coming to macOS. Running the Windows program itself through a compatibility layer is not a configuration its developers support, so that is not the route either.

But your library does not need the program. It needs something on the Mac that reads those folders, and there are two ways to get them across.

If the PC is still running and on the same Wi-Fi

Use the free Windows Companion. It finds the library on the PC and sends it to the Mac over your local network with a four character pairing code, with no account and no cloud step in the middle. Worth knowing before you type it: the code is four characters, not four digits, so it can contain letters. The full walkthrough is in how to import your Wallpaper Engine library to Mac.

If the PC is not around

Copy the 431960 folder to a USB stick, an external drive, or a cloud folder, and carry it over. At that point it is ordinary data and it does not care how it travels. Then, in Vivid Walls:

1. Open the File menu and choose Import Wallpaper Engine Library. The shortcut is Cmd+Option+Shift+I.
2. Click Select Folder and point it at your copied folder.
3. Review what it found and import. Everything compatible is selected by default.

Two traps, both cheap to avoid. Do not go one folder too high: the importer looks one level down from what you select, so choosing 431960 works and choosing its parent content finds nothing. If your import comes back empty, that is almost always the reason. And dragging the folder onto the window will not work: drag and drop handles individual media files, so a Wallpaper Engine folder has to come in through the File menu. Use the menu and it works first time.

Situation two: you own it, but the PC is sold or dead

Then everything above still applies, provided you took a copy while you had the chance. If you did not, there is nothing to recover, because a subscription is a link to somebody else's upload rather than a copy you hold.

This is also the reason to make that copy now if the PC is still alive. Steam removes a Workshop item from your machine when its creator takes it down, and Wallpaper Engine's own documentation says plainly that it cannot prevent this. The ten minute version is in how to back up your Wallpaper Engine wallpapers.

Situation three: you have never owned Wallpaper Engine

Here the honest answer is the disappointing half. You cannot subscribe to Workshop items for an app you do not own, and that is Steam's rule rather than anything an app on this end decides.

What is worth separating out is that you do not need the Workshop to have animated wallpapers on a Mac. Eight animated wallpapers ship inside Vivid Walls and load the first time you open it, so the app is not an empty shell waiting on a library you do not have. Beyond that, your own files work: video, GIF, web pages and still images all run as wallpapers, per display.

If what you specifically want is a particular Workshop scene, the route is the ordinary one. Wallpaper Engine costs a few dollars on Steam, you subscribe to what you want on a Windows machine, and then the sections above apply.

What genuinely does not carry across

Being straight about the limits, because a half-true yes is worse than a clear no:

• Presets and application wallpapers. Presets are built on Wallpaper Engine's own built-in effects rather than being self contained, and application wallpapers are Windows executables. Both are listed as incompatible during import, with the reason shown.
• Your playlists and monitor layout. Those are application settings stored inside Wallpaper Engine, not part of the wallpaper files. The wallpapers come across, the arrangement does not.
• Creator updates. A copy is frozen at the moment you took it. If a creator ships a better version next month, only a live Steam subscription gets it.
• A small number of scenes. Most Workshop scenes render correctly and some do not yet, usually ones leaning on shader features still being worked through. If you hit one, send the Workshop link to support@vividwalls.app and it goes in the queue.

Why the usual answer is just "no"

Because the question sounds like it is about the program, and about the program the answer really is no. Wallpaper Engine does not run on macOS, and there is no version of this where you launch it there.

The step that gets skipped is that the wallpapers are separable from the program that fetched them. Once you have looked inside 431960 and seen folders with a project.json and an mp4 in them, the question stops being philosophical. They are files. Something else can read files.

The short version

If you already have the wallpapers, you can use them without Wallpaper Engine, and on a Mac that means copying the 431960 folder over or sending it with the Companion, then File then Import Wallpaper Engine Library. Scenes render natively on Apple Silicon rather than being replayed as a recorded video. If you have never owned Wallpaper Engine, you cannot get Workshop items, but eight animated wallpapers ship in the app and your own video, GIF and web files work as wallpapers too.

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.