How to transfer your Wallpaper Engine library to Mac

We also wrote this up as a step-by-step walkthrough of the whole transfer, covering what to have ready before you start, the local network transfer itself, and what to check when a scene does not show up on the Mac.

What you'll need

• An Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or later) running macOS 14.0 (Sonoma) or later, with Vivid Walls installed from the Mac App Store.
• A Windows PC with your existing Wallpaper Engine library on it, Steam Workshop subscriptions and all.
• Both devices connected to the same Wi-Fi network. Home networks work reliably; some public or guest networks block the local discovery this relies on.

The whole process, install to first wallpaper applied, usually takes about ten minutes. Nothing is uploaded anywhere: the transfer runs directly between your Mac and PC over your own network.

Step by step

Troubleshooting

The Mac and PC can't find each other

This is almost always a network issue rather than an app issue. Confirm both devices show the same Wi-Fi network name. Some routers isolate wireless clients from each other for security ("AP isolation" or "client isolation"), which blocks the local discovery this relies on, check your router's settings if you control it, or try a personal hotspot as a workaround on unfamiliar networks (a coffee shop or office Wi-Fi, for example). A VPN active on either device can also interfere; disconnect it and try again.

Windows SmartScreen won't let the Companion run

This is expected for a smaller independent app that hasn't built up SmartScreen's reputation database yet. Click More info, then Run anyway. The download link only ever comes from vividwalls.app.

The transfer is slow

Transfer speed depends on your Wi-Fi, not on Vivid Walls. Moving both devices closer to the router, or connecting the PC via Ethernet if possible, speeds things up noticeably for large libraries.

Some scenes didn't come through, or don't render correctly

Scene format coverage is where the most active development happens, since the Workshop catalog spans years of scenes with different styles and complexity. If something is missing or renders wrong after import, send the scene name or Workshop link to support@vividwalls.app, reported scenes get looked at directly and patched in updates.

What transfers, and what to expect

Vivid Walls plays the Wallpaper Engine scene format natively (particle effects, visual effects, animated characters), and also plays video, web, and GIF wallpapers. It does not claim every single wallpaper in every library renders identically to Windows on day one, scene format support is broad but still actively expanding. What does transfer is the actual file: nothing is re-encoded, re-compressed, or altered in transit, and nothing is stored anywhere except on your own Mac and PC. For the bigger picture of running Wallpaper Engine on Mac, including where scene support still falls short, see the full answer page.

A sense of proportion helps for setting expectations before you import. Filtering the Steam Workshop by wallpaper type gives 1,561,362 scene items, 1,187,365 video items, and 101,223 web items, out of 2,865,391 published in total. Scene and video are the two formats most libraries are built from; web wallpapers, the format with the most gaps on macOS today, are the smallest of the three by a wide margin. Those are counts of Wallpaper Engine's catalog, not a measurement of how much of it renders correctly on a Mac, which is not a number anyone has published. Your Steam Workshop subscriptions also stay exactly where they are: the transfer copies files to your Mac and changes nothing on your Steam account.

Sources: Steam Workshop item counts, unfiltered and filtered by scene, video, and web type. Figures checked 2026-08-20.

Keep reading

• Wallpaper Engine for Mac: the full answer → Why there's no official Mac version and what your options are.
• The complete Mac guide → How Vivid Walls renders scene files under the hood.
• Support and compatibility reports → Report a scene that doesn't render right.