Windows 11 offers more customization than any other version of Windows, but it's still not enough for those who love to customize their digital workspace. Thankfully, there are a ton of unofficial tweak tools you can employ to make your version of Windows feel more like home, from reskinning the whole UI to replacing the Start menu with other options. But if you don't want to go to those lengths for a little more flair, how about adding an app to make your desktop wallpaper animated, so you're not stuck staring at static screens all day long? We've tested out the two most popular options, one paid and one free, to give you a good overview of which one is best for your desktop.

How to use live wallpapers on Windows 11 with Lively Wallpaper

Let's dive into the free option and see how it fares

Lively Wallpaper is easily one of the coolest apps for using unique animated wallpapers for your PC. It's free and open-source, with listings on the Microsoft Store and on GitHub for anybody who wants to contribute. The app provides a few wallpapers out of the box and allows you to customize them in different ways.

Here's how you can get started with this free tool:

1. Download and install Lively Wallpaper from the Microsoft Store.
2. Open Lively Wallpaper, and you'll be greeted with the home screen featuring a few (12, at writing time) wallpapers to choose from.
3. Click any of the options to immediately set it as your desktop background.
4. To customize the look of your wallpaper, click the ellipsis button next to its name, then choose Customise wallpaper.
5. Since the available wallpapers are pretty different, the options you get also vary. These can include colors, the size of certain elements, and more. You can see changes in real time as you make them (assuming the wallpaper is currently active).
6. Click OK to save your changes.

Once you've saved your settings, you can close the app using the X button in the top right corner, which will minimize to the system tray. Closing it completely will make your wallpaper disappear. The app is also set to start with the system, so your animated background is always visible, though you can change this in the app's settings.

The app also has a Gallery tab in the main view, which will presumably house user-created wallpapers in the future. For now, you're stuck with a few curated ones, but they're all great.

How to choose your own wallpaper

While you don't have an endless supply of wallpapers to choose from, Lively Wallpaper does let you upload your own. All kinds of wallpapers are supported, including video (online or local), GIFs, and even interactive web-based wallpapers. While we won't dive into how you can create these wallpapers, the developer offers documentation on what's supported. If you already have a wallpaper, here's how to set it up.

1. Open the Lively Wallpaper app.
2. Click the + (plus) icon in the menu bar at the top.
3. Choose a file or source to use as a wallpaper
   • To use a local file, drag and drop the file into the area indicated on the screen or click Open to browse for a file. Most video file types are supported.
   • Use the Enter URL option to use an online video or a webpage. The app uses a custom handler for things like YouTube videos, so you can have a video playing in the background as long as it's not restricted from being embedded.
   • The Advanced option lets you create dynamic wallpaper based on a 2D image. It uses AI to determine depth and generate a parallax effect when you move your mouse, though it can be imperfect at times.
4. You can still customize some of these wallpapers just as you can with the default ones. Local video offers settings like contrast, brightness, and playback speed, while AI-generated dynamic wallpapers let you adjust how much an image should shift with the parallax effect.
5. When you're done, close the app, and the video or animated wallpaper will remain visible. If the video has audio, it will usually be muted whenever you have another app in focus.

How to apply wallpapers to multiple monitors

If you only have one monitor for your PC, things are probably pretty straightforward so far, but if you want to use these animated wallpapers on multiple screens, you may want to mess around with extra options to make it work on all your displays.

You can do this by clicking the monitor icon on the menu bar, labeled with X Active Wallpapers (X being the number of monitors with an active wallpaper from the app). From here, you can choose one of three options:

1. Selected screen only (default): Applies the wallpaper only to the selected screen.
2. Span across screens: Extend the wallpaper across your monitors.
3. Duplicate same wallpaper: Repeat the same wallpaper on each monitor.

Some wallpapers may work well when spanned, while others will look better if you choose the duplicate option. You can play around with this depending on the wallpaper you have. If you'd like the option to always choose a monitor before applying a wallpaper, check the box that reads Always pick screen when choosing wallpaper. Click OK when you're done with your changes here.

Tips and tricks for using Lively Wallpaper

Lively Wallpaper doesn't impact performance too much, but you can take some measures to save power, especially if you have a laptop. By default, Lively Wallpaper will pause the wallpaper animations whenever a fullscreen app is open, but you can further customize these options by going into the app's settings and checking the Performance tab. The options here include:

• Applications fullscreen: Decide what happens with animated wallpapers when an app is opened in fullscreen (default: Pause).
• Applications focused: Decide what happens when another app is in focus (default: Nothing).
• When on battery power: Decide what happens when a laptop isn't connected to a charger (default: Nothing).
• When on battery Saver: Decide what happens when Battery Saver is enabled in the Windows settings (default: Nothing).
• When on Remote Desktop: Decide what happens when the computer is being accessed via a Remote Desktop session (default: Pause).
• Display pause rule: Decide whether pause rules should apply to all screens or on a per-screen basis (default: Per screen).
• Pause algorithm: Choose how the app should determine if another app is active. The default is Foreground process, and we recommend leaving this untouched. There's also a Direct3D option that only pauses the wallpaper when a Direct3D app is running in exclusive fullscreen mode and disables all other performance settings.

You can use all these settings to adjust how Lively Wallpaper should behave to reduce resource usage and save power. Setting more options to Pause will save you more power, but it can reduce how lively these wallpapers feel in certain circumstances.

How to use live wallpapers on Windows 11 with Wallpaper Engine

The best option around with a relatively affordable cost

Lively Wallpaper works great as a free tool, but scouring through Google and YouTube looking for that perfect video to use as an animated wallpaper does take some time. You're not even entirely sure how the end result will look until you apply the wallpaper. While the pre-installed wallpapers look great, some of you might want more options to pick from. Enter Wallpaper Engine.

Wallpaper Engine is a cheap wallpaper app on Steam (currently $4 and often on sale). It's one of the most popular non-game apps on the platform, and the main reason behind its success is access to the Steam Workshop. Users can create their own live wallpapers based on games, anime, landscapes, digital art, and more. The app has a thriving community of wallpapers, and you can quickly find almost anything you can think of.

Setting up Wallpaper Engine

Wallpaper Engine is incredibly easy to set up, as it launches directly from Steam and tells you everything you need to know from the get-go. Still, here are the exact steps that you need to follow if you're unsure of how to get started:

1. Buy and install Wallpaper Engine from Steam.
2. Launch the app from your Steam library. Steam will ask you to select one of the launch options, but you can stick to the default and first options. To avoid the message in the future, tick the box for Always use this option.
3. A setup wizard should pop up. Start by selecting your language and clicking Let's go.
4. Next, select the quality present you want for your live wallpapers. Low will give you a 10fps animation, Medium will give you 15, High will give you 25, and Ultra will give you 30. Go with High for now and click Next. We can always change the quality later.
5. On the next screen, tick the box for Start automatically. From now on, Wallpaper Engine will launch whenever you boot up Windows. Click Next to continue.
6. Finally, click All done on the last screen to complete the setup process.

If you follow the settings above, Wallpaper Engine will launch and work seamlessly every time you turn on your computer. If you're having issues with performance, consider changing the quality preset. We'll discuss how to do that in later sections.

Choosing and customizing a wallpaper in Wallpaper Engine

After downloading and installing the Wallpaper Engine app from Steam, you can start by browsing through the massive catalog. After opening the app, you'll notice three sections in the upper-left corner: Installed, Discover, and Workshop.

• The Installed section shows the wallpapers you have already saved, as well as pre-installed wallpapers that you can quickly apply.
• Next, the Discover section highlights some of the more popular collections and individual wallpapers.
• Finally, the Workshop section contains every user-created wallpaper uploaded to the app's catalog. You can browse through this section or use the search bar to find something specific.

Here are the exact steps for finding and applying wallpaper from the Workshop sections:

1. Head over to the Workshop section and browse the different wallpapers. The search box allows you to find specific wallpapers.
2. You can further refine your search by using the filters in te left sidebar. You can filter by resolution, tags, media formats, and age ratings.
3. After you find a wallpaper you like, click it to open it. From the window on the right, click Subscribe to download and apply the wallpaper. Any wallpaper you subscribe to will end up in the Installed section.
4. After subscribing to a wallpaper, you can change its Color scheme, Alignment, Playback rate, Volume, and Position from the window on the right. Once you're happy with your preset, click OK to apply it.
5. You can now close Wallpaper Engine, and it will minimize itself to the system tray. The selected wallpaper will be applied while the app runs in the background.

Tips and tricks for using Wallpaper Engine

Up until now, things have been pretty straightforward. However, if you want to make the most of Wallpaper Engine, you'll want to play around with the options in the Settings and Displays tab.

Multi-monitor support

If you have more than one monitor, it's worth going to the Displays tab within Wallpaper Engine to set up how you want animated wallpapers to appear on different screens. The Displays tab is located at the top of the Wallpaper Engine app, right next to the Settings tab.

Here are some tips for setting up wallpapers across multiple monitors:

• When applying a wallpaper, you can choose whether it will apply to Monitor 1 or Monitor 2. This allows you to apply different wallpapers to either monitor.
• If you want to clone the wallpaper to both monitors, go to the Displays tab and click Wallpaper per display. From the drop-down menu, select Clone single wallpaper.
• To stretch a wallpaper across both displays, go to the Displays tab, click Wallpaper per display, and select Stretch single wallpaper.

Tips for performance

By default, Wallpaper Engine isn't all that intensive in terms of performance. However, if you have a lower-end machine with a limited amount of RAM or are using a laptop, it can make your system feel sluggish. Fortunately, there are a ton of different options you can change in the Settings tab to improve performance. You can find this tab in the top-right corner of Wallpaper Engine.

Here are some options you can change to improve performance:

• Click the Settings tab and head over to the Performance section. First, you can change the Playback settings so that Wallpaper Engine isn't running when you maximize a full-screen window. You'll also want to set the Other application playing audio setting to mute to avoid audio overlap between Wallpaper Engine and other apps.
• Underneath the Playback section, you'll find the Quality settings. Wallpaper Engine usually defaults to the High preset. If you're having performance issues, consider dropping this down to Medium or Low.
• You can also create your own custom preset by changing the FPS, anti-aliasing, post-processing, texture resolution, shadows, and volumetric lighting settings.

Play around with these settings to see what works best for your system. Keep in mind that certain wallpapers have higher-quality textures and shadows, which can impact performance even with the Medium or Low presets.

Make your monitor pop

Both of these tools work well, but Wallpaper Engine offers an endless selection of user-created wallpapers from the Steam workshop. This makes it well worth the $4 asking price. On the other hand, Lively Wallpaper is a great free tool that allows you to make your own wallpapers or use some of the pre-installed creations. If you're uncertain between the two, try out Lively Wallpaper first before spending money on Wallpaper Engine.