Lively Wallpaper vs Spice
Lively Wallpaper
rocksdanister.comSpice
spicebox.devSide by side
| Figure | Lively Wallpaper | Spice |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | — | Yes |
| API | Yes | — |
| Plans published | 2 | 0 |
| Spec score · Desktop Wallpaper Software | 8.4 (#7) | 6.9 (#30) |
| Multi-monitor | Lively supports any number of monitors, spanning or duplicating wallpapers and supporting HiDPI and ultrawide resolutions. | Spice supports independent wallpapers for each display, including portrait and ultrawide monitors. |
| Performance | Wallpaper playback pauses when fullscreen applications or games run, reaching approximately 0% CPU and GPU usage. | The site says Spice is built in Go and processes 4K images in the background. |
| Privacy | The application says it does not collect, store, or share personal information; operational window and process data is kept local. | The site says API keys and personal Google Photos stay on the user's machine, and image cropping and AI face detection happen locally. |
Plans
In their own words
Lively Wallpaper
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.