Clockwork Orange vs Fresco

Clockwork Orange manages desktop wallpapers on KDE Plasma 6, Windows 10/11 and macOS 13+. It can select random images from local folders, distribute choices fairly among sources and assign a different image to each monitor. On KDE Plasma, it can rotate the lock-screen image separately from the desktop. Download plugins fetch images from Wallhaven and DuckDuckGo Images on hourly, daily or weekly schedules, with a file limit configurable for each source. Wallhaven’s full catalogue requires an API key. The app records image URLs and content hashes to prevent duplicate downloads, even if a file has been deleted. Marking an image in the window deletes the file and adds its hash to a blacklist for future downloads. Version 4 is a native Go program with a command-line binary that also runs as the daemon, plus a Fyne desktop window with plugin controls, history, blacklist management and settings. It is free under the MIT License. On Linux it can run as a systemd user service; the macOS app is ad-hoc signed and not notarised.

Fresco is a Linux desktop app for setting video, GIF, slideshow, image, and playlist wallpapers as animated backgrounds. Slideshows can use transitions, and the app includes a catalog of curated, licensed wallpapers. Each monitor can have its own wallpaper, selected from a wallpaper’s context menu. Four widgets are available: synced lyrics, a clock, an audio visualiser, and album art on a turning record. Lyrics follow media over MPRIS, checking local .lrc files before LRCLIB. Video playback uses GPU hardware decoding through mpv with VA-API or NVDEC. Fresco supports X11 and the Wayland layer-shell compositors COSMIC, Hyprland, Sway, and KDE Plasma 6. On GNOME Wayland it displays a still frame, and widgets are unavailable because there is no live wallpaper surface. It can pause on battery or when a window goes fullscreen on a display. A daemon keeps wallpapers running after the app closes and restores them after reboot. Fresco is free forever, licensed under GPL-3.0, and made by Dibbayajyoti Roy. Distribution options include a one-line installer, a .deb release, and the deepin App Store.