Use an animated GIF as wallpaper on X11-systems.

By using shared memory between X11 client and server, this is not as performance-inefficient as it may seem at first. Nonetheless, expect some memory to be used for bigger GIFs with a lot of frames.

Due to using the shared memory extension of X11, this program will not work in X11 sessions over the network.

In its current state, xgifwallpaper will always use all available screens.

xgifwallpaper will work with all window managers, that expose the root window of X. Also, X compositors supporting pseudo-transparency, should work with xgifwallpaper, like xcompmgr or picom.

Currently known to work with

• bspwm
• Cinnamon
• dwm
• i3
• Lxde - Use -w option with the first windows ID from atom _NET_CLIENT_LIST_STACKING(WINDOW) of root window. See examples.
• Mate - Use -w with CAJA_DESKTOP_WINDOW_ID
• Openbox
• qtile
• Xfce - Use -w with XFCE_DESKTOP_WINDOW
• xmonad
• Awesome WM

Known not work with

• Budgie
• Englightenment
• Gnome3 / Mutter
• KDE Plasma 5

Every feedback and testing is appreciated!

See output of --help:

USAGE:
    xgifwallpaper [FLAGS] [OPTIONS] <PATH_TO_GIF>

FLAGS:
    -v               Verbose mode
    -h, --help       Prints help information
    -V, --version    Prints version information

OPTIONS:
    -b, --background-color <X11-color>     X11 compilant color-name to paint background. [default: #000000]
    -d, --default-delay <default-delay>    Delay in centiseconds between frames, if unspecified in GIF. [default: 10]
    -s, --scale <SCALE>                    Scale GIF-frames, relative to available screen. [default: NONE]  [possible
                                           values: NONE, FILL, MAX]
        --scale-filter <SCALE_FILTER>      Filter to use in combination with scale-option. Experimental feature.
                                           [default: AUTO]  [possible values: AUTO, PIXEL]
    -w, --window-id <WINDOW_ID>            ID of window to animate wallpaper on its background, insted of the root
                                           window. As decimal, hex or name of root-atom.

ARGS:
    <PATH_TO_GIF>    Path to GIF-file

Center mybackground.gif on all screens:

xgifwallpaper mybackground.gif

Set background color to #ffaa00:

xgifwallpaper -b "#ffaa00" mybackground.gif

Override default delay with 100 centiseconds:

xgifwallpaper -d 100 mybackground.gif

Scale mybackground.gif to fill the entire screen and be verbose:

xgifwallpaper -v -s FILL mybackground.gif

Scale mybackground.gif to maximize used screen-space, but without cutting the image. Also, set background-color to white, override default-delay with 30 centiseconds and be verbose:

xgifwallpaper -v -b white -d 30 -s MAX mybackground.gif

Use window, referenced by specified atom of root-window, to draw wallpaper, instead of the root window itself:

# Use with Mate
xgifwallpaper -w 'CAJA_DESKTOP_WINDOW_ID' my_wallpaper.gif

# Use with XFCE
xgifwallpaper -w 'XFCE_DESKTOP_WINDOW' my_wallpaper.gif

Use background the first window in stacking order to draw wallpaper, instead of the root window. To be used with Lxde:

xgifwallpaper -w $(xprop -root | awk '/_NET_CLIENT_LIST_STACKING\(WINDOW\)/{print $5}' | tr -d ,) mybackground.gif

There is an AUR-package for arch-based linux-systems.

For other systems, you will need to build this yourself.

Dynamically links mainly X11-libs:

• xlib
• xinerama
• xshm

There will be build-specific dependencies

See Installing Rust.

You need the header files for X11 and its extensions Xinerama and XShm. Further dependencies are libc and a C-compiler-suite like gcc, rust will need to link the C-bindings.

On Arch-based-systems, the packages needed are listed as depends and makedepends in the PKGBUILD of the AUR-package:

# pacman -S gcc gcc-libs git glibc libx11 libxau libxcb libxdmcp libxext libxinerama

Rust is not included, as I would suggest installing it the way described above.

On Ubuntu-based-systems, use

$ sudo apt install libx11-dev libxinerama-dev libxext-dev

git, rust, libc and a C-compiler-suite need to be installed.

This should also work on Debian, but this is not verified.

From project-root:

$ cargo build --release

The result is built as target/release/xgifwallpaper.

Run cargo test for all unit-tests.

Run cargo test --features x11-integration-tests to run additional tests in a X11-session, against the running server.

Run run_samples.sh from directory tests/samples for an e2e-smoke-test of some configurations.