Chwall an automatic wallpaper changer for gtk desktops

milouse · 2019-10-30 18:22:36

Hi!

Some time ago (since the Variety hiatus) I began to write for myself a light wallpaper changer. My primary goal was to have something usable from the terminal, able to use my own wallpaper collection, but also to fetch new ones from well known sources (like bing, national geographic…). And after a lot of work it begin to look like something interesting.

At some point I differ from my initial goal and now, Chwall (as I call it, see the README for the reason) has 3 different interface: command line client, a status icon for your system tray (Mate…) or a standalone app (Gnome…). Moreover, its launcher as action to allow one to switch to next or previous wallpaper (for exemple if you put the launcher in the gnome dash). It can use systemd or classical xdg behavior to autostart the background daemon when your user session start in order to change you wallpaper from time to time.

It currently support the following sources: local folders, bing pictures of the day, National Geographic pictures of the day, NASA astronomical pictures of the day, deviantart RSS feeds, Unsplash random API (requires a free account to access their API) and Reddit. I build an interface to easily customized Chwall.

And to answer the most important question: it currently support (as far as I know) Mate desktop, Gnome, Budgie or light wm like awesome or I3 by using nitrogen to set the wallpaper. You can also indicate a shared place on your system to let lightdm or any other login manager access the current wallpaper and bring some continuity to your desktop.

So, now it's the day I take the risk to show my creature to the world I would be grateful to any comment, feature request or issues: feel free to try and say what you think of it.

The source code is hosted on own server, but mirror exist on github or Framagit (gitlab instance hosted by a well known french free software advocacy association) if you already have an account there. I'm open to contributon, thus don't hesitate.

Chwall can be translated to your language too! I use my own weblate instance to translate it, thus again don't hesitate to register there to help me release chwall in various languages (for now, only french and english are supported).

Thank you very much for your attention, don't hesitate to ask any question.

[EDIT] Oh, and of course, it's already available on AUR

Last edited by milouse (2019-10-31 12:33:12)

Lneux · 2019-11-23 01:02:55

What a lovely lightweight program, I'm already installing it on all of my machines! Are you planning on keeping it updated for how long?

milouse · 2019-11-23 20:36:58

Hi, thank you for your message

Don't worry, I still work on it and don't plan to stop pushing it before long

milouse · 2019-11-24 18:22:15

Woops, I just saw that someone send me a private message by email from the forum, and I wrongly thought it was an answer to this topic, thus I delete it to answer here but… no trace of it. My mistake.

It was about chwall, nitrogen and aspect ratio. If the one who send me the message recognize him·herself, do not hesitate to wave here

So, to answer what I remember: yes Chwall currently set wallpaper using the `--set-zoom-fill` nitrogen parameter, in a naïve expectation that it will fit most of the case. Before setting the wallpaper, it just check if the picture is width anouth to be streched on all display as one wallpaper, or be duplicated across displays.

In a near future I may open a way to pass your own arguments to nitrogen, or maybe use another tool to set your wallpaper for non-desktop environments. I'm open to suggestion.

Arch Linux

#1 2019-10-30 18:22:36

Chwall an automatic wallpaper changer for gtk desktops

#2 2019-11-23 01:02:55

Re: Chwall an automatic wallpaper changer for gtk desktops

#3 2019-11-23 20:36:58

Re: Chwall an automatic wallpaper changer for gtk desktops

#4 2019-11-24 18:22:15

Re: Chwall an automatic wallpaper changer for gtk desktops

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