Weather
Rain live wallpaper for Mac
Rain is a rain-on-the-window live wallpaper for the Mac: drops cling to the glass, let go and slide down, with blurred city lights behind, drawn live by MacScapes. The built-in Rainy Café vibe adds the Rain sound.
By Chris at Neon FrenchieUpdated
- In MacScapes
- MacScapes Pro
- Family
- Weather
- Default palette
- Desert Night
- Built-in vibe
- Rainy Café
Water on the glass
Each drop clings to the window for a moment, then lets go and slides quickly down a wandering path, wiping a clear trail through the condensation and leaving a line of small beads behind. Elsewhere, tiny beads of condensation slowly grow and evaporate.
Every drop is drawn as a small lens. It holds a sharper, upside-down view of the street behind it, with a dark rim and a highlight, the way real drops on a window do.
Beyond the glass the city is out of focus: soft lights in three depths gather at street level with the odd lit window above, and fine streaks of rain fall between the window and the street, catching the light. Scale changes the size of the drops; the city stays the same.
On your desktop
Rain fills the screen with small detail and no single subject, so it works behind any arrangement of widgets. The default Desert Night palette gives a violet night with peach lights. The Rainy Café vibe uses Storm instead, a cooler gray, with a Weather widget and the Rain sound. On a light palette such as Paper the window turns pale and misted, with the lights as darker discs.
The Rain sound, steady rain close by, is the natural match; Café, cups and a low murmur, turns it into a coffee-shop window.
Settings
Every scene has Speed, Intensity, Scale, Grain and Vignette, and Shuffle for a new variation. Rain adds its own:
- Downpour
- How wet it is: more drops and beads on the window, more condensation on the glass and heavier rain falling outside.
- Bokeh
- How many out-of-focus lights the city shows behind the glass.
In other palettes
Any of the 48 palettes can recolor Rain. Here it is in another we’ve rendered.
How to set it
- Click MacScapes in the menu bar, choose Open MacScapes, then Scenes in the sidebar (or press ⌘2).
- Select Rain under Weather. The inspector opens with a preview, the palettes and the Adjustments.
- Click Apply to make it the background of the vibe you’re using, or Save as New Vibe to keep it alongside your widgets and sound. Rain is a Pro scene, so both need MacScapes Pro; the preview and the Adjustments work without it.