Dynamic Wallpaper Engine

A wallpaper plugin for KDE Plasma that continuously updates the desktop background based on the current time in your location.

Additional Wallpapers

More dynamic wallpapers can be found at https://github.com/karmanyaahm/awesome-plasma5-dynamic-wallpapers.

Installation

Arch Linux

yay -S plasma5-wallpapers-dynamic

Fedora

sudo dnf install plasma-wallpapers-dynamic

In order to use the dynamic wallpaper builder tool, install plasma-wallpapers-dynamic-builder package.

Ubuntu 20.10

sudo apt install plasma-wallpaper-dynamic

Building From Git

In order to build this wallpaper plugin from source code, you need to install a couple of prerequisites

Arch Linux:

sudo pacman -S cmake extra-cmake-modules git plasma-framework qt5-base qt5-declarative \
    qt5-location libexif libavif

Fedora:

sudo dnf install cmake extra-cmake-modules git kf5-kpackage-devel kf5-plasma-devel \
    kf5-ki18n-devel qt5-qtbase-devel qt5-qtdeclarative-devel qt5-qtlocation-devel \
    libexif-devel libavif-devel qt5-qtbase-private-devel

Ubuntu:

sudo apt install cmake extra-cmake-modules git libkf5package-dev libkf5plasma-dev \
    libkf5i18n-dev qtbase5-dev qtdeclarative5-dev qtpositioning5-dev gettext \
    qml-module-qtpositioning libexif-dev libavif-dev build-essential qtdeclarative5-private-dev \
    qtbase5-private-dev

Once all prerequisites are installed, you need to grab the source code

git clone https://github.com/zzag/plasma5-wallpapers-dynamic.git
cd plasma5-wallpapers-dynamic

Configure the build

mkdir build && cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release \
    -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr \
    -DCMAKE_INSTALL_LIBDIR=lib \
    -DBUILD_TESTING=OFF

Now trigger the build by running the following command

make

To install run

sudo make install

How to Use It

Right-click a blank area of the desktop and choose "Configure Desktop...", select "Dynamic" wallpaper type and click the Apply button.

How to Create a Dynamic Wallpaper

The kdynamicwallpaperbuilder command line tool is used to create dynamic wallpapers. As input, it takes a manifest json file describing the wallpaper and produces the wallpaper

kdynamicwallpaperbuilder path/to/manifest.json --output wallpaper.avif

This engine supports several types of dynamic wallpapers - solar and day-night.

How to Create a Solar Dynamic Wallpaper

With a solar dynamic wallpaper, the engine will try to keep the images in sync with the Sun position at your location.

The manifest file looks as follows

{
    "Type": "solar",
    "Meta": [
        {
            "SolarAzimuth": "*",
            "SolarElevation": "*",
            "CrossFade": true,
            "Time": "18:00",
            "FileName": "0.png"
        }, {
            "SolarAzimuth": 0,
            "SolarElevation": -90,
            "CrossFade": true,
            "Time": "00:00",
            "FileName": "1.png"
        }, {
            "SolarAzimuth": 90,
            "SolarElevation": 0,
            "CrossFade": true,
            "Time": "06:00",
            "FileName": "2.png"
        }, {
            "SolarAzimuth": 180,
            "SolarElevation": 90,
            "CrossFade": true,
            "Time": "12:00",
            "FileName": "3.png"
        }
    ]
}

It might look like you must provide a lot of data, but don't be scared. Let's break it down.

The SolarAzimuth field and the SolarElevation field specify the position of the Sun when the associated picture was taken. The Time field specifies the time, which is in 24-hour format, when the picture was taken. If the user is not located near the North or the South Pole, the dynamic wallpaper engine will try to show images based on the current position of the Sun; otherwise it will fallback to using time metadata. Note that only the Time field is required, the position of the Sun is optional.

If SolarAzimuth or SolarElevation has a special value of "*", then the position of the Sun will be computed based on the time when the picture was taken and the GPS coordinates stored in its Exif metadata.

The CrossFade field indicates whether the current image can be blended with the next one. The cross-fading is used to make transitions between images smooth. By default, the CrossFade field is set to true. Last, but not least, the FileName field specifies the file path of the image relative to the manifest json file.

Now that you have prepared all images and a manifest file, it's time pull out big guns. Run the following command

kdynamicwallpaperbuilder path/to/manifest.json

If the command succeeds, you will see a new file in the current working directory wallpaper.avif, which can be used as a dynamic wallpaper.

Note that encoding the dynamic wallpaper may take a lot of memory (AVIF encoders are very memory hungry) and time!

How to Create a Day/Night Dynamic Wallpaper

A day/night dynamic wallpaper consists of only two images - one for the day, and one for the night. The engine will automagically figure out which one to use based on the current time or the Sun position at your location.

The manifest file for a day/night wallpaper looks as follows

{
    "Type": "day-night",
    "Meta": [
        {
            "TimeOfDay": "day",
            "FileName": "day.png"
        }, {
            "TimeOfDay": "night",
            "FileName": "night.png"
        }
    ]
}

How to Use Dynamic Wallpapers for macOS

Since dynamic wallpapers for macOS and this plugin are incompatible, you need to use a script to convert dynamic wallpapers.

curl -sLO https://raw.githubusercontent.com/zzag/plasma5-wallpapers-dynamic-extras/master/dynamicwallpaperconverter
chmod +x dynamicwallpaperconverter

Once you've downloaded the dynamicwallpaperconverter script, you can start converting wallpapers

./dynamicwallpaperconverter --crossfade file.heic

After the command above has finished its execution, you should see a file in the current working directory named wallpaper.avif, which can be fed into this plugin.

If it takes too long to encode the wallpaper as an avif file, you can change the encoding speed. Note that the encoding speed affects the final file size!

./dynamicwallpaperconverter --speed 5 --crossfade file.heic

For more details, check the output of ./dynamicwallpaperconverter --help.