Mini Wallpaper

An ultra-light animated wallpaper app for Windows.

Mini Wallpaper is for people who like the idea of Lively Wallpaper, but only need the focused part: play local animated wallpapers behind the desktop icons with as little overhead as possible.

It is intentionally small:

• native WPF app, no browser runtime;
• local media only, no wallpaper store or online catalog;
• tray menu instead of a heavy management UI;
• automatic media optimization before playback.

Mini Wallpaper is an independent project and is not affiliated with Lively Wallpaper.

Why it exists

Lively Wallpaper is powerful, but many users only want one thing: a local animated wallpaper that stays out of the way.

Mini Wallpaper trades breadth for efficiency. It does not try to be a full wallpaper platform. It tries to be the smallest pleasant tool that solves the core use case well.

What makes it lightweight

When you choose a wallpaper, Mini Wallpaper keeps the original untouched and creates an optimized playback copy in:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\MiniWallpaper\optimized\

The import pipeline:

• converts animated GIFs to MP4;
• caps playback media at 30 fps;
• scales videos down only when they exceed the primary monitor size;
• stores deterministic cached copies so the same file is not transcoded again needlessly.

This matters because animated GIFs and oversized 4K60 videos are expensive formats for a desktop background.

Example from a real desktop

On the machine this project was built on:

Scenario	Before	After
Wallpaper media	4K60 MP4, 27.04 MB	1080p30 MP4, 4.69 MB
Mini Wallpaper private memory while playing	~640 MB	~210 MB

Those numbers are a concrete local measurement, not a universal benchmark, but they show the kind of waste the app is designed to remove.

Features

• MP4, WMV, AVI, MOV, and GIF input support
• Automatic GIF-to-MP4 optimization
• Native desktop embedding behind icons
• Tray menu for:
  • choosing a wallpaper
  • pausing or resuming playback
  • enabling launch at startup
  • quitting the app
• Automatic startup support
• Original wallpaper files are never modified

Non-goals

Mini Wallpaper is deliberately narrow. It currently does not include:

• a wallpaper marketplace
• web wallpapers
• widgets
• playlists
• multi-monitor scene management
• a large visual library manager

If you need a full wallpaper ecosystem, Lively Wallpaper is the better fit. If you only want a local animated wallpaper with very little baggage, Mini Wallpaper is built for that.

Requirements

• Windows
• .NET Framework tooling already available on Windows for local builds
• ffmpeg.exe available when running native-wpf/install.ps1
  • the installer copies ffmpeg.exe next to the installed app so automatic optimization keeps working afterward

Quick start

Build locally

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\native-wpf\build.ps1
.\dist-native\mini_wallpaper.exe

Install for the current user

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\native-wpf\install.ps1

If ffmpeg.exe is not on PATH, pass it explicitly:

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\native-wpf\install.ps1 -FfmpegPath "C:\path\to\ffmpeg.exe"

The installer:

1. builds the native app;
2. installs it to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\MiniWallpaper\;
3. copies ffmpeg.exe next to the executable;
4. enables launch at startup;
5. starts the installed app.

How wallpaper selection works

1. On first launch, Mini Wallpaper looks for Documents\Gifs\wallpaper.mp4.
2. If no saved wallpaper exists, it opens a file picker.
3. When a media file is selected, it is optimized automatically.
4. The active wallpaper path is stored in:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\MiniWallpaper\wallpaper.txt

Project layout

native-wpf/
  Program.cs      # application code
  build.ps1       # local build
  install.ps1     # install + ffmpeg copy

Development

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\native-wpf\build.ps1

The project is intentionally compact so the full behavior can still be understood from one main source file.

Roadmap ideas

• better multi-monitor handling
• optional cache management UI
• signed release builds
• a friendlier first-run installer

License

Mini Wallpaper is open source under the MIT License.