Lively Wallpaper turns the Windows desktop into a moving one. Drag in a video, a GIF, a web page or a Shadertoy URL and it becomes your wallpaper; Unity and Godot games can run there too. Any wallpaper can double as the screensaver, and multiple monitors are supported. Web wallpapers can react to music, show hardware readings or use machine-learning effects such as depth parallax through its API.
It is a free alternative to Wallpaper Engine and is careful with resources: playback pauses when a full-screen game or app is running, on battery power if you choose, and during remote desktop sessions, so it costs close to nothing while you work. It can be controlled from the command line, which makes it scriptable with tools like AutoHotkey.
It is GPL-3.0, with about 19,900 stars, and is essentially the work of one developer with a handful of contributors; the repository moved from rocksdanister/lively to the lively-community organisation. The latest release, v2.2.1.0, is from September 2025, with development continuing on a separate branch. It runs on Windows 10 and 11 only.
- Repository: github.com/lively-community/lively
- Licence: GPL-3.0 (GNU General Public License v3.0)
- Language: C#. Stars: 19.9K. Forks: 1,398. Last push: Sep 30, 2026.
- Scan: safe, Oct 26, 2026, commit 25a0a5f
Who it is for
Windows users who want an animated or interactive desktop without paying for Wallpaper Engine, and web developers who want to build wallpapers in HTML and JavaScript.
Getting started
1. Install the Microsoft Store version with winget
winget install 9NTM2QC6QWS7 -s msstore2. Or install the standalone installer build
winget install rocksdanister.LivelyWallpaperThe installer is also on the GitHub releases page. The Store and installer builds differ slightly; the project wiki's 'Which version do I download?' page explains how.
Safety scan
We cloned lively-community/lively at commit 25a0a5f on Oct 26, 2026 and ran the checks described on the GitHub Tools page: credential patterns, decode-and-execute code, install-time scripts, committed binaries, risky CI workflows, every host the code talks to, known vulnerabilities in pinned dependencies, and project hygiene. A person read every hit. This is what we found.
- No secrets, no suspicious code patterns, no install hooks and no committed binaries across about 47,000 lines of C#.
- Web page wallpapers run in a Chromium-based renderer and application wallpapers are ordinary programs started by Lively, so a wallpaper from an untrusted source can do whatever a web page or app can. Videos and images carry no such risk.
- To pause wallpapers, Lively reads the titles and process names of open windows; its PRIVACY.md says this stays on the machine and logs are only sent if you choose to share them. The Microsoft Store build may send crash reports through the Store's own telemetry.
- The code includes a client for an online wallpaper gallery at api.livelywallpaper.net, with sign-in through Google or GitHub, and the configured address uses plain http rather than https.
- There are no GitHub Actions workflows, so release builds are not produced in public CI, and there is no lockfile for the scanner to check NuGet packages against. Licence and contributing guide present; no security policy or Dependabot.
What the scanner counted
| Check | Result |
|---|---|
| Secrets | None found. |
| Suspicious code | None found. |
| Install-time code | None: nothing runs at install beyond the package manager itself. |
| Committed binaries | None. |
| CI workflows | No GitHub Actions workflows. |
| Network hosts | 29 distinct hosts referenced from source; most often github.com, learn.microsoft.com, aka.ms, docs.microsoft.com. No URLs to bare IP addresses. |
| Known vulnerabilities | No lockfile to check: dependencies are declared as ranges, so what gets installed is whatever is current on the day. |
| Project hygiene | Has licence file, contributing guide. Missing security policy, automated dependency updates, CodeQL. |
| OpenSSF Scorecard | Not scored: the project is not in Scorecard's weekly index. |
By the numbers
| Stars | 19.9K |
|---|---|
| Forks | 1,398 |
| Contributors | 6 |
| Commits | 1,099 |
| Open issues | 401 |
| Open pull requests | 2 |
| Releases | 64 |
| Latest release | v2.2.1.0 |
| Licence | GPL-3.0 |
| Main language | C# |
| Project age | 7 years |
| Last push | Sep 30, 2026 |
| Tracked files | 794 |
| Lines of code | 47.4K |
| Checkout size | 110 MB |
Lines by language: C# 46K, Protobuf 560, JSON 541, Markdown 157, YAML 138.
Questions
Is Lively Wallpaper free?
Yes. Lively is free and open source under GPL-3.0, on both the Microsoft Store and GitHub, with no ads and no paid features. The developer accepts donations.
Does Lively slow down games?
By default it pauses wallpaper playback when a full-screen application or game is running, which brings its CPU and GPU use close to zero. You can also set rules per application and pause it on battery.
Is there a Lively Wallpaper for Mac or Linux?
No. Lively is built on WinUI 3 and the Windows App SDK and runs only on Windows 10 and 11.
This post is part of GitHub Tools, where every repository is cloned and scanned before it is written up. The scan is a snapshot of one commit on one day; the repository has moved on since, so check it before you install.