Set up animated wallpapers on Linux (Gnome/KDE)

I recently discovered an amazing piece of software that lets you pick any video file as your desktop background for your Linux.

Hidamari ーひだまりー

This open source python program is what allows us to set a live wallpaper. To install;

First open a terminal and run

 flatpak --version

If you get an output like “Flatpak 1.14.4” then you have Flatpak already installed. If you get something like “command not found” then you need to install flatpak first.

If you already have Flatpak installed. Open a terminal and run;

flatpak install flathub io.github.jeffshee.Hidamari

If you don’t, go to this website and click on your distribution. It will give you a detailed list of instructions to install Flatpak on your system. Then run the above command to install Hidamari.

Setting up your live wallpaper

First go to your application menu and search for “Hidamari” and launch it. Or run,

flatpak run io.github.jeffshee.Hidamari

from a terminal. On my system (Pop_os 22.04 GNOME with Nvidia Proprietary drivers) it takes around a 1–2 minutes to Hidamari app to launch. I have no idea why.

Click on the folder icon on the top left and browse for the video file you want as your background.

You can find many of these on YouTube. You can use a website like this to download them. Or you use many other websites to get live/animated wallpapers. Here’s a playlist of wallpapers I really enjoy !

In the Hidamari app, click on the video thumbnail and click “Apply” to apply. You can also stream a video or a web page (including WebGL games) using the tabs above as well. (You need a constant internet connection to do this).

Please note that according to their GitHub page, Hidamari works on Wayland as well, but I haven’t tried it. It works perfectly with my X11 Gnome.

If you enjoy this application, please consider supporting them!

And that’s it ! If you have issues, you can check their GitHub page or leave a comment, and I’ll try and answer it.

I you enjoyed this read, consider supporting me.