How to get a live wallpaper on a Mac: what moves, and what it costs

Yes, you can have a live wallpaper on a Mac, but no built-in setting makes one move while you work. Apple's free aerials (System Settings, then Wallpaper) move only as you lock the Mac and come back from the lock screen, or as your screen saver, and its dynamic wallpapers only change their light through the day. For motion behind your windows you need an app: a video wallpaper app like Backdrop or Wallspace, Plash for a web page or GIF, or one that draws something real, like the sky over your city.

I make one of these, Orbit, so you know where my bias sits. Everything about the other apps comes from their makers' own pages and store listings, read on 20 October 2026.

Free live wallpapers already on your Mac: dynamic and aerial

Before you pay anyone, me included, open System Settings. Apple ships two kinds of wallpaper that change, both free, with no watermark and nothing to install.

How to turn on a dynamic wallpaper on a Mac

These steps are from Apple's macOS 27 guide. They're the same on a MacBook or a desktop Mac, and the path (System Settings, then Wallpaper) goes back to macOS 13 Ventura.

Apple's wallpaper settings page explains the other three. Automatic switches from light to dark at sunset, but only if your Appearance is set to Auto. Light (Still) and Dark (Still) never change.

Why is my dynamic wallpaper not moving?

It isn't meant to move. A dynamic wallpaper is a still picture whose light changes over hours, about as fast as the real afternoon does.

If it never changes, check two things. First, the menu should say Dynamic, not Automatic or one of the Still options. Apple's older Ventura-era guide says that if you picked Dark Mode when you set up the Mac, it starts on "a dark still image". Second, the same guide says that with Location Services off, the picture follows the time zone in Date and Time settings, so a Mac on the wrong time zone gets the wrong light. The full list of fixes, in order, is in dynamic wallpaper not changing on your Mac.

How to get a live wallpaper on macOS Tahoe (and macOS 27)

On Tahoe and macOS 27, Apple's aerial wallpapers move at the lock screen and in the screen saver. Behind your spreadsheet they hold still.

To get one, open System Settings, then Wallpaper, and pick an aerial (cities, underwater scenes, the Earth and scenery). Apple's guides say it animates as you lock the Mac and as you come back from the lock screen, and becomes your screen saver too unless you change it. Then it stops. Cult of Mac says the screen saver "will gently come to a stop and become your new desktop background".

During the Tahoe beta, Macworld reported that the Tahoe aerial, set as both wallpaper and screen saver, animates on the lock screen. macOS 27 Golden Gate has four of its own. MacRumors found Golden Gate Sunset and Golden Gate Night in the third beta, with waves on the rocks near the bridge in one and cars crossing it in the other, then Golden Gate Day and Evening in the sixth. All four move as you lock the Mac and as you come back from the lock screen.

Video wallpaper apps for Mac: Backdrop, Wallper, Wallspace and more

If you pictured a looping video behind your windows, this is the kind you want. Backdrop from Cindori, Wallper and Wallspace download from their makers' sites, and 4K Live Wallpaper by Hao Wen comes from the Mac App Store. Most come with a library of clips and a way to bring your own.

That last column needs a pinch of salt, because the makers don't count the same way. Activity Monitor counts per core, so 100% is one core flat out. Backdrop's footnote takes its 3% and divides it across the M1 Max's ten cores to get 0.3% of the whole machine. Wallper's 1.46% is a share of one core, and so are my numbers for Orbit further down.

How to set a GIF as your Mac wallpaper: Plash

Plash by Sindre Sorhus is free, with no ads, and makes "any website your desktop wallpaper". The listing points out you could even set an animated GIF, so yes, a GIF can be your Mac wallpaper. It can switch itself off on battery.

Its FAQ is pleasantly blunt. Plash "is not actually a wallpaper, but rather runs right above the wallpaper", and it usually uses around 40 MB (more for heavy websites). Asked why it's free without ads, the answer is "I just enjoy making apps." The current version needs macOS 26.4 or later, but the site keeps older versions, back to macOS 10.15.

Free live wallpaper for Mac with no watermark

Apple's dynamic and aerial wallpapers and Plash cost nothing and carry no watermark. Of the video apps, Backdrop says plainly that its trial backdrops carry one. Orbit has no watermark either, but it costs $6.99 and has no free trial.

Is there a Wallpaper Engine for Mac?

No. Wallpaper Engine's help page says it "is currently available for Windows and Android", with "no immediate plans to support other platforms at this time". Steam lists Windows 10 and Windows 11 only.

That's a shame for Mac people, because 97% of its 234,327 English-language Steam reviews are positive, and it has more than 950,000 reviews in all languages. On a Mac, Backdrop, Wallper and Wallspace are the nearest thing.

A Mac wallpaper that changes with the time of day

24 Hour Wallpaper from Jetson Creative takes Apple's dynamic idea further: mostly photo sets of real places (a few are painted or anime-style mixes), 5K or sharper, that "change throughout the day to match the time at your location". It needs macOS 15 or later and comes with 8 wallpapers free.

The other 165 are sold one at a time (the singles listed are $2.49) or all together. Lifetime access to the lot is listed at $29.99, though a $69.99 tier with the same name appears too, and there's a 14-day free trial. Once a wallpaper is set in Apple Dynamic Desktop mode the app doesn't need to be running, but the downloads can take up to 15 GB of disk.

The light follows your clock, but the clouds are whatever was there the day the photos were taken. To use your own photos, Equinox (free, with tips) and Dynaper (free, but its exports carry a watermark until you pay to remove it) turn them into Apple's own dynamic format.

A live night sky wallpaper: the real sky over your city

⊕ Inspect the image

A closer look

Actual sizeClose ×

A dusk sky with faint constellation lines; right of centre a bright white point with a short cyan trail, the space station, and dark hills along the bottom.

This is the kind I make. Orbit draws the sky over your city as it is this minute, worked out on your Mac: 2,874 stars, thin constellation lines, a faint Milky Way, the five planets you can see without a telescope, and the Moon in its true phase. By day there isn't much up there but the Sun in its glare. Three far hills run along the bottom, the same hills everywhere on Earth.

It's one still picture, redrawn once a minute. The only thing that animates is the International Space Station during a visible pass: a white-hot point in a cyan glow with a short trail, crossing from the second it rises to the second it sets. Visible passes mostly come around dawn and dusk (why the ISS is only visible then).

Orbit also puts a Moon in your menu bar, in tonight's phase. Click it for a card with the next sunrise or sunset, the Moon, the planets, the next visible ISS pass, the next launch and the Kp index for aurora. When a visible pass is due in the next four days, a gold play button on that card plays it on your desktop in twelve seconds, and you can switch on an alert five minutes before the station rises.

⊕ Inspect the image

A closer look

Actual sizeClose ×

Orbit's briefing card on the right of a dark night desktop, headed Tonight, Mon 5 Oct, Los Angeles, with tiles for sunrise at 6:51 AM, a 21% waning crescent Moon, no ISS pass in the next four days, Mars, Saturn and Jupiter, a launch countdown of 21h 23m and Kp 3.0. Behind it, thin constellation lines, Saturn and Fomalhaut labelled, and the compass letters SE, S and SW above dark hills.

Real time is slow, and you should know that before you buy. On a 1080p display the sky moves about 4 pixels a minute, one screen width in about eight hours. You won't see it move. You look up after a couple of hours and the Sun is somewhere else.

On 10 October, with the app waiting in App Review, I complained about my own app: "no matter how long I keep the app open in the background I don't notice the stars moving or the sun or the moon, it just feels like a static background." So if you want something that visibly moves all day, get a video app.

I like having it there anyway; living with a real sky wallpaper says why.

Open it and the sky appears behind your icons straight away, for a city guessed from your Mac's time zone. Right-click the menu bar Moon to pick Location (13 cities, or Use My Location), Facing (north, east, south or west), Labels on the Sky and Open at Login. The full walkthrough goes through every setting. It's one wallpaper, not a library, and there's no city search beyond the 13 and your own location. It also shows the sky as it would look from a dark field, without your city's light pollution.

Two other Mac apps draw from real data. Stargaze 3D by 3Planesoft ($2.99, last updated March 2025) is a 3D live wallpaper whose listing promises "the real positions of the Sun and the planets", Moon phases and 88 constellations. It doesn't say whether it uses your location.

Living Earth by Radiantlabs ($12.99) is a menu bar clock and weather app whose wallpaper is the whole Earth seen from space, with clouds from satellite data every three hours. For a planetarium you can steer, see astronomy apps for the Mac.

Can you put a live wallpaper on the Mac lock screen?

Apple's aerials are made for it: pick one under Wallpaper in System Settings and it plays as you lock the Mac and as you come back from the lock screen, Tahoe and Golden Gate included. Backdrop, Wallper and Wallspace say they can put video there too (Wallspace on macOS 26 or later, in Pro), and 4K Live Wallpaper offers video screen savers for the lock screen.

Plash and Orbit can't, because of how they work. macOS gives apps no official way to set a live wallpaper, so each is a window just above your wallpaper (Orbit's sits under your desktop icons). Your real wallpaper is never touched: quit Orbit and the old one is simply there again. The flip side is that the lock and login screens show whatever picture is set in System Settings.

If you use Orbit, pick a dark system wallpaper, so locking the Mac after a night sky doesn't throw a bright photo at you.

Does a live wallpaper slow down a Mac or drain the battery?

A video wallpaper decodes video the whole time it's on screen, which is why the makers above pause it behind full-screen apps or on battery. Apple's dynamic wallpapers, and 24 Hour Wallpaper in Apple Dynamic Desktop mode, need no app running at all.

Orbit redraws one still picture a minute instead. On my Mac mini (Apple M6, macOS 27.0, one 1920x1080 display), it averaged 0.04% CPU over five idle minutes and sits at 22 MB of memory idle. It's built to pause when no Orbit window can be seen (a full-screen app, the lock screen, the screen saver, a sleeping display) and on battery below 20%.

I've measured the lock-screen pause, but never the battery one, because my Mac mini has no battery. Nor have I measured Orbit on a laptop, on an Intel Mac or on the GPU. The whole question has its own post on battery drain.

Which live wallpaper app is best for your Mac?

If you want to watch something move, a video app is the honest answer: Wallspace's free tier or Backdrop's untimed trial will tell you whether you like it before you pay, and Plash does a GIF for nothing. If you'd like the sky over your city as it is right now, with the space station crossing it during a pass, that's what I built.

Orbit: Live Sky Desktop is $6.99 once (₹699 in India), and that's the whole price: no subscription and no in-app purchases. You don't need an account. There's no free trial, so the screenshots and details on the Mac page are the fairest preview I can give you. It needs macOS 15 or later and runs on Apple silicon and Intel. It's my first Mac app, on the Mac App Store since 18 October.