RainWallpaper gives Windows dynamic wallpaper capabilities
RainWallpaper is a free portable software for devices running Microsoft's Windows operating system that adds dynamic wallpaper capabilities to the operating system.
Dynamic wallpapers are not an entirely new thing; Microsoft tried to sell Windows Vista Ultimate by adding a bunch of exclusives to the operating system edition. One of the exclusives was Dreamscene which provided users with options to play videos as desktop wallpapers. It did not take long for users to figure out how to run Dreamscene on other Vista editions and XP, and even on Vista's succeeding operating system Windows 7.
Third-party apps like Desktop Movie or DreamRender were created, and the video player VLC supported video backgrounds as well.
One of the latest programs to support dynamic backgrounds is the excellent Wallpaper Engine; it is not free but well worth the asking price in my opinion.
RainWallpaper
RainWallpaper has been released recently. The free portable program for Windows adds its own dynamic wallpaper engine to the Windows operating system. The download sits at around 100 Megabytes right now; it includes four different dynamic wallpapers that users can switch between immediately, and options to install new wallpapers from the active DeviantArt group.
The wallpaper that you see on the screenshot above is dynamic in nature. Since it is impossible to capture the dynamic nature of wallpapers with images, it is probably best to see the introductory video of RainWallpaper created by the developers.
The software loads one of the backgrounds right away when you start it on the Windows machine. You have two main options to interact with the program:
- Control some of its functionality from the System Tray icon.
- Control it from the main interface.
The system tray icon displays various options: use it to select a new wallpaper to display, to open the settings, to mute or pause wallpapers, or to create your own custom dynamic wallpapers.
The main interface displays all available wallpapers and options to discover new dynamic wallpapers. It loads the DeviantArt page of the group and displays all available wallpapers. A click on download on any page adds it as a new wallpaper to the program. New wallpapers are published to the group regularly. You can pick from a wide selection of themes such as high tech, featured, landscapes, or games.
Settings are pretty straightforward. Wallpapers are paused automatically when full screen apps like games are run. Mute is enabled as well and the program is set to run on system start. You can control the volume, language, and monitor the dynamic wallpaper is displayed on as well from the Settings.
RainWallpaper supports two different types of dynamic wallpapers that you may create. You may create video wallpapers or web wallpapers. Video wallpapers take a video file -- wmv, avi, mp4 and move are supported -- and turns it into a dynamic wallpaper. Web wallpapers require an HTML file on the other hand.
The options are quite powerful. You can create animations from static images, and create interactive wallpapers that accept mouse input or sound.
As far as resource usage is concerned, RainWallpaper uses quite a bit of RAM and some CPU while running. It depends a lot on the loaded dynamic wallpaper image but memory usage was about 150 Megabytes during tests.
Closing Words
RainWallpaper is an excellent program for Windows that you may use to create and load dynamic wallpapers. The wallpapers are displayed for as long as RainWallpaper runs in the background.
The option to create your own dynamic wallpapers is a welcome addition even though I had some issues figuring out how to close the creation interface as it did not come with a close button.
Creation was a simple process, however.
Hello, I downloaded the portable version of WallPaper, but when I run it on my Windows 10, it shows the logo, but it always returns to my wallpaper it was before, ie it does not put the animated wallpaper, leaving only my image.
You know what that might be?
It give me an “Access violation” error with a file called videocore.exe
Anyone else experiencing this? I couldn’t find any forum or some buglisting anywhere on their site.
That looks like the windows from the start up menu of The Last Of Us.
bing desktop used to be good to use just for wallpapers. switched to different landscape/nature view every few minutes.
just grabbed those pics and made win10 use them as slideshow.
Bing Desktop（https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35844）is a malicious “Browser Hijacker”.
The search engine is replaced with “bing” and forced.
Moreover, the load of system Resources is heavy.
An advertisement (pup) appears one after another.
In the background, communication to Facebook etc. will be done.
The troublesome thing is that the application does not have a delete function, so I need a third party Uninstaller, but it takes time and effort to completely delete it.
That’s real experience.
Retired people have time to look at wallpapers. Look forward to that day It’ll be there sooner than you think.
To me a wallpaper should exist, but be functional for at least 99.9% of the time the user is at the PC. My current wallpaper looks like two colors, black and dark gray (actually 88 colors). This way my desktop icons (maximum of 17×7=119 with a maximum 2 line text descriptor) are easily visible for a near instant selection with a double click. If I want to see any of my 15,000+ images, I have other automated ways to do that. I do not need a wallpaper to distract me from my PC tasks at hand. Just my opinion where other obviously disagree.
This program seems to pop out of nowhere since last week. And it seems not from an American developer. Should I be worried about Russia/China sponsored program, doing nefarious things?
Also, for anyone that tried both, how is CPU usage compare to Wallpaper Engine?
@Teiji,
This application is based in the United States.
http://rainysoft.cc/rainwallpaper.html
https://dnslytics.com/ip/108.167.154.246
“DeviantArt Group” is developing it.
https://www.deviantart.com/rainwallpaper
https://dnslytics.com/ip/52.84.150.26
Contact
https://about.deviantart.com/contact/
https://dnslytics.com/ip/52.84.150.26
Developers
https://www.deviantart.com/developers/
https://dnslytics.com/ip/52.84.150.26
DeviantArt
https://github.com/DeviantArt
https://dnslytics.com/ip/192.30.255.113
The CPU load can be measured with the task manager (AnVir Task Manager Free).
As Martin said, at least “150 MB” will be consumed.
I never think that it is small.
I prefer “black” monotone. Because it is effective for asthenopia and power saving.
Take off your tinfoil hat.
@A normal human being unlike you loser….
Did you know that Tin Foil was first brought to Earth from the planet Reynolds by Space Aliens…?
I would take your comment seriously if you weren’t so childish with your “loser” username
Who has time to look at their wallpapers? :D
When you run full screen application,rainwallpaper will auto pause.
My thought exactly. Either you’re at the computer working on something, or you’re away, and should blank the screen to conserve energy (and save the world).
looking at dynamic wallpapers and hear music @ work… that´s awesome
;-)
Awesome, Thank you for sharing such a amazing App.
I was looking for such animated wallpaper app, we had it in Windows XP days, and I was wondering, back at those days we always required powerful system to run such cosmetic changes, and now we have so powerful systems but not such apps.
Thanks.
I test it and the most amazing thing about it is that it doesn’t take up CPU.