How to get a live wallpaper on Mac

What macOS can do on its own

Aerials: motion at the lock screen

Aerials are slow-motion footage of landscapes, cities, the sea and Earth from space. Apple says they animate as you lock or unlock your Mac. On the desktop itself they hold still.

1. Open System Settings›, then Wallpaper.
2. Pick an aerial under Landscape, Cityscape, Underwater or Earth. If it shows a download arrow, click it to download the video first.
3. Or pick Shuffle Aerials and choose how often it changes.

By default, the aerial you choose is also your screen saver, so it plays in full when the Mac is idle. From the other side, click Wallpaper›, then Screen Saver…, pick an aerial and turn on Show as wallpaper. Apple brought this pairing of screen saver and wallpaper in with macOS Sonoma 14.

Dynamic wallpapers: change through the day

Under Dynamic Wallpapers, the menu next to the wallpaper offers Dynamic, which brightens and darkens the picture through the day for your location, plus Automatic, Light (Still) and Dark (Still). It shifts slowly rather than moving. Our guide to wallpaper by time of day covers making your own.

The three kinds of live wallpaper app

For a wallpaper that moves all day, behind your icons and windows, pick the kind of app that fits what you want to see.

Filmed video loops

Apps like Backdrop and Wallper come with a library of video wallpapers and play your own clips too. Both can also put video on the lock screen (Wallper on macOS 26 or later). They sell outside the Mac App Store, with a trial before you pay: Backdrop is $1.99 a month, $14.99 a year or $29.99 once, Wallper $14.99 once for 3 Macs (Pro), $24.99 for 5 Macs (Pro+).

Your own video, for free

Aerial is free and open source. It plays Apple’s aerials, community packs or your own .mov and .mp4 files as the wallpaper and screen saver. Version 4.1 needs macOS 26; 4.0.16 runs on macOS 15. Our guide to setting a video as your wallpaper compares the apps that loop your own clip.

Scenes drawn live

Instead of playing a recording, these apps draw each frame on your Mac’s graphics chip as it’s shown. There’s no clip that restarts every few seconds, and the scene isn’t tied to a video’s resolution, so it fills any display. MacScapes works this way, and any of its palettes recolors a scene. So does Mac+, and Vivid Walls draws the Wallpaper Engine scenes you copy over from a Windows PC. There’s also Plash, which shows a web page, so any web animation can become the wallpaper.

All of them run in the background, so two things are worth checking before you choose: whether it pauses when windows cover the desktop or you’re on battery, and what you get without paying. The best live wallpaper apps for Mac compares both for ten apps.

Get a live wallpaper with MacScapes, step by step

1. Download MacScapes from macscapes.app, drag it to Applications and open it. It runs from the menu bar.
2. The welcome steps ask you to Pick a first vibe. A vibe is a scene and a palette, with widgets and sound if you like. Click one, and it goes on your desktop right away.
3. Click Continue, then Start Using MacScapes. On the last step you can turn on Open MacScapes at login so the wallpaper comes back after a restart.
4. To switch, click the MacScapes icon in the menu bar and pick another vibe, or press Control-Option-Command-→ for the next one.
5. To try other scenes, open the MacScapes window, go to Scenes, Control-click a scene and choose Save as New Vibe. The Palettes pane recolors it.

The free version has 7 scenes (Mist, Aurora, Haze, Daybreak, Silk, Contours, Koi) and 11 palettes, with no time limit or watermark. Pro unlocks all 42 scenes, the Living Stills, every palette and your own videos. Browse them all on the scenes page.