John’s Background Switcher vs Walltone

John’s Background Switcher changes a Windows or Mac desktop background on a schedule, using individual photos or assembled montages and collages. Its image sources include local photos and services such as Flickr, SmugMug, Unsplash, Pixabay, Dropbox, OneDrive, Vladstudio, Immich, and Media RSS feeds, though availability varies by platform. Windows also lists Pexels, Last.fm, and Wallhaven. On Mac, it can manage multiple monitors, showing the same or different images on each, or using a single monitor. Mac switching intervals range from every 10 seconds to 7 days, with grayscale, sepia, and desaturation effects. Windows support starts at Windows 10 and requires Microsoft.NET 4.8; the setup wizard can install that dependency. The maker says settings and authentication tokens are stored locally, photo services are contacted directly, and cached photo results are kept for no more than two days. Windows is free at free. Mac direct costs 7.99 USD once, and Mac App Store costs 8.99 USD once.

Walltone is a free GPL-3.0 wallpaper and theme manager for Linux. It handles static images, video wallpapers, and animated Wallpaper Engine content, with browsing and downloads from Pexels, Unsplash, Wallhaven, and Wallpaper Engine. Users can assign wallpapers per display, arrange monitor layouts, and adjust scaling. From wallpapers, Walltone generates light and dark Base16 and Material You color schemes; a color picker allows refinements and theme exports for other applications. Tag filters, search, sorting, Boolean filters, and a JavaScript-capable template engine support organization and customization. Video controls include mute and scaling. Wallpaper Engine controls include volume, FPS, audio, parallax, fullscreen pause, and texture clamping. Video or animated wallpapers can be captured as still images for login managers or GRUB. Online sources require API keys, including a Steam Web API key for Wallpaper Engine. Installation is listed through the Arch User Repository, a Nix flake, or source builds. Requirements include Linux, Node.js 18+, and playback and screenshot utilities.