Play Video as Animated Wallpaper in Ubuntu via This Tool

Last updated: May 30, 2021

Want to play a video as animated background wallpaper? There’s now a new tool to do the job via GPU rendering.

Gpu Video Wallpaper is the project. As the name indicates, it uses GPU for rendering video with low CPU usage.

The software uses MPV to play video file. So mp4, mkv, flv, gif, and large list of video formats are supported. And it plays video animated wallpaper in Dual- or Multi-monitors.

1.) Download Gpu Video Wallpaper

You can either go to previous link, click ‘Code’ button and select ‘Download Zip’, or click on the button below to download it:

2.) Run the software to play animated wallpaper

Open file manager and un-compress the zip archive, then navigate to the source folder. There right-click on blank area and select “Open in Terminal”.

Next you can run command to play video as animated wallpaper:

./gpu-video-wallpaper /PATH/TO/VIDEO

The tool depends on xrandr, pcregrep, and mpv. First run may prompt either to install the dependencies or not. Type y and it will install them automatically.

3.) Stop the animated wallpaper:

Stop the command via Ctrl+C will not stop the animated wallpaper, you need to run below command in the same terminal window:

./gpu-video-wallpaper --stop

4.) Install the tool for system wide use:

If you like the software, and want to run the command anywhere in any terminal window, copy the executable files to /usr/local/bin via command:

sudo cp gpu-video-wallpaper xwinwrap /usr/local/bin/

Then you can use this command instead to play video as animated wallpaper:

gpu-video-wallpaper /PATH/TO/VIDEO

And adding --startup flag if you want to start animated wallpaper at login. So the command will be:

gpu-video-wallpaper --startup /PATH/TO/VIDEO

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I'm a freelance blogger who started using Ubuntu in 2007 and wishes to share my experiences and some useful tips with Ubuntu beginners and lovers. Please comment to let me know if the tutorial is outdated! And, notify me if you find any typo/grammar/language mistakes. English is not my native language. Contact me via ubuntuhandbook1@gmail.com Buy me a coffee: https://ko-fi.com/ubuntuhandbook1

2 responses to Play Video as Animated Wallpaper in Ubuntu via This Tool

  1. Didn’t work. I tried variations of locations and commands. Nothing worked. Ubuntu 20.04

  2. This works, but when i click somewhere on the desktop the video exits