Fresco vs Lively Wallpaper

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.

Lively Wallpaper is a free, open-source animated wallpaper application for Windows. It supports video and GIF wallpapers through mpv or VLC, with filters and hardware acceleration, and can load HTML files or web addresses running WebGL and JavaScript. Other wallpaper sources include GLSL shaders, Shadertoy URLs, video streams, and Unity or Godot games; GUI application support is limited. Wallpapers can span or duplicate across any number of monitors, including HiDPI and ultrawide displays, and any wallpaper can be used as a Windows screensaver. Command-line arguments and third-party scripting software such as AutoHotkey provide control options. Playback pauses when fullscreen applications or games run, reaching approximately 0% CPU and GPU usage. Lively says it does not collect, store or share personal information, while operational window and process data remains local. The listed plan is free and requires Windows 10 version 1903 or above with a 64-bit installer. Only the latest release receives security patches, and vulnerabilities can be reported by email.