Who doesn't have a thing for tweaking their desktops? We've all spent decades staring at monitor screens with normal, static wallpapers, and when you've got a mildly-decent rig, the first thing you want to do is change the desktop. After all, that's the first thing that greets us every time we turn our PC on. Now, the default, for many, is Wallpaper Engine, and yet, it isn't actually as easy as it might seem to justify spending even a single cent on something like a desktop wallpaper.

Still, live wallpapers really do add a bit of personality to a PC, and that's where free replacements come in. Sure, they might not be as good, but they get the job done, and if you go over to Steam, you'll see plenty of free live wallpaper apps vying for your attention. After sorting by user ratings, I tested the top 5 free live wallpaper apps on Steam, and was actually genuinely surprised at how they stacked up.

5 ScreenPlay has been dead in the water for a while

Early access, pretty early exit

This was the biggest surprise. ScreenPlay is actually the third-highest rated free live wallpaper app on Steam today, sitting at a Very Positive rating. However, it's still in 'Early Access', and seeing how the last update made was over two years ago, it's pretty much dead in the water right now. The UI here is a nightmare: the browsing gallery only lets you select the top wallpaper in a category, and even that refuses to download, no matter how many times you spam the download button.

There's also a subscribe button next to each wallpaper, but, sadly, that doesn't do anything, either. As such, talking about the collection of wallpapers available in ScreenPlay wouldn't really matter, since the UI feels actively hostile against you. It's also the only one of the five apps I tested that crashed — not once, but twice over a ten-minute period. Nothing worked, so I even tried uploading a video of my own to import into the software, hoping that might work. That just ended up hanging the app, so I had to call in Task Manager to clean up the mess. Zero out of ten, honestly.

4 Wallpaper Alive worked, but not in the right way

Decorate my desktop, don't hijack it

Wallpaper Alive is the highest-rated free live wallpaper app on Steam with great reviews, so I saved it for last. To my dismay, it was around the second-worst, if not at the very bottom. For starters, the UI is terribly bland to look at, but even if we ignore that since it's the wallpapers that matter, the UI also stands for un-intuitive here. There's no workshop or list of wallpapers to browse through in the app. Instead, it routes you through to Steam Workshop, where you have to filter through categories to see which one you like, and subscribe to it.

Then, you have to go back into the app, and juggle around between windows with a few clicks before your subscriptions show up in the library. With all that said and done, the wallpapers I ended up picking simply didn't work. Going back to the desktop, I was greeted with nothing but my own static default background. It was only when I tried refreshing that a right-click began the wallpaper, which then proceeded to simply eat up all my icons and overlap over the desktop.

Some quick troubleshooting tips later, it still didn't work, leaving a rather bad taste in my mouth. At the very least, the wallpaper functioned, even if it didn't work the way it was supposed to, and that's the only reason I'd rank this above the mess that ScreenPlay is.

3 Screen Wonders is brave... but limited

You could call it brave or audacious — it's baffling either way

Now, Screen Wonders is another free for Windows on Steam, and it may not do all that well, but hey, at least it works well, and the UI is good. However, that's pretty much all the good there is about this tool.

You get about 50 wallpapers in total with the free version, all of which are pretty much just abstract 3D renders or koi pond visualizations. There are no gaming themes or anime vibes here — nothing to do with pop culture at all, really. And this blatant lack of options makes sense as soon as you hit the paywall: $50 a year or $80 for lifetime access to the 'full' library. The worst part is how the renders you do have are actually rather cheap to look at, with zero visual flair or style, so even while I'm behind the paywall, I can only imagine what $80 will get me.

Honestly, it's pretty bold to think anyone would be willing to shell out 10 times the cost of Wallpaper Engine per year to stick to your app, so, props for the delusion, I guess. Still, there is a screen-saver feature that just overlays your chosen wallpaper after a few minutes of idle time, which was pretty neat, and perhaps one of the very few redeeming qualities this tool had.

2 DPET: Desktop Pet Engine is the cutest tool I tested

Not quite transformative, but certainly the most adorable

Now, DPET is one of the top-rated desktop wallpaper tools on Steam, but it's less like a wallpaper app, and more like having tiny moving stickers running around on your desktop. You can throw a couple of Sephiroths and a Doraemon or Sonic, and watch them crawl, sit, or even tumble off the walls.

Surprisingly, the best part was how it actually kept me engaged with work. Sephiroth was clearly my favorite, climbing the sides of my desktop slyly while falling with complete grace, while the rest go down like clumsy toddlers. You can even have your key taps make your sticker jump, akin to Bongo Cat and its drums.

Heck, even when you delete stickers or ask them to 'leave', they walk out of the screen, looking at you almost as if they want you to make them stay. The roster, too, is surprisingly varied. Limited? Definitely, but also varied. I cackled at seeing Frisk and the cute dog from Undertale, the Knight from Hollow Knight, and even Satoru Gojo. My partner wouldn't stop gushing about that last one, so I made sure I uninstalled his sticker promptly.

Sadly, scaling these stickers up immediately turns them pixelated, and the limited collection could've been more expansive. There's also a reminder feature, which, in theory, is good. I'd have had Sephiroth or Gojo reminding me to drink water or walk around, but instead, the app just throws 30 stickers at you for each reminder, and the text itself is a bland white-on-black box. Cute, but it needs more polish.

1 Wallpaper Play is the best free live wallpaper tool on Steam

It's either this or Lively from off-Steam

As someone who has been using Wallpaper Engine for two years now, it was Wallpaper Play that felt the most similar. It's the second-highest rated live wallpaper app on Steam right now that you don't have to pay for, but I'd daresay it deserves to be at the very top. With about 4500 free live wallpapers covering pretty much every category in pop culture, Wallpaper Play might have a limited collection compared to the million-plus options in Wallpaper Engine, but it absolutely nails the job.

Even GPU usage in Wallpaper Play stays under tolerable limits, with my GPU usage only hitting 2 GB for 4K wallpapers. It scaled down pretty well, too — 1440p live wallpapers never took more than 1.5 GB VRAM, and 1080p never crossed the 1GB mark. If you've got a 6 or 8GB GPU, Wallpaper Play certainly takes care of your desktop without taxing your device too much.

What surprised me the most here was how even the most interactive 4K wallpapers in this app were significantly smaller than anything I've seen on Wallpaper Engine. I'm used to downloading 600–700 MB wallpapers, but here, barely any of them crossed the 100MB mark while still having the same amount of visual flair and quality.

There are problems with the UI, though. For example, every time I changed categories in the app while browsing, it would reset my filter for resolution. In fact, if I set a resolution filter, it immediately locked me out of all categories and threw me into the 'All' categories page. Here, my only option was to scroll through every 4K option available instead of just choosing from my category of choice.

If you're on a budget 1080p build or even a 1440p build with a GPU that isn't too strong in its VRAM, Wallpaper Play is the best wallpaper tool on Steam I'd recommend, perhaps even if you had the money for Wallpaper Engine, since the latter's affinity for VRAM is pretty renowned. It's honestly this one or Lively Wallpaper, and that's all you need to pick from.

We all want our desktops to be have a unique and personal touch

I won't lie — testing even these top-rated free apps on Steam felt like I was digging through bargain-bin software. Some are really nice finds, while some should remain at the bottom of the barrel.

It's actually remarkable how much of a difference just a few dollars can make for paid software, and if you do wish to stay on the free side of things, you might as well step out of the Steam atmosphere. Move on over to the Windows Store, and Lively Wallpaper presents itself as one of the best free Wallpaper Engine alternatives. No matter what you go with, though, there's no harm in wanting your desktop to be unique and personalized.