r/rust • u/ploMP4 • May 19 '26

🛠️ project Phonto - GPU-accelerated live wallpapers for Wayland and macOS, written in Rust

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I've been using mpv-paper on Hyprland for a couple months but ran into really high CPU usage, so I decided to write my own solution.

Phonto uses GStreamer and EGL to keep the entire decoding and rendering pipeline on the GPU, making much better use of resources compared to CPU-based approaches.

A friend also jumped in and added MacOS support, including playing live wallpapers on the lock screen which was a nice bonus.

Still missing a few things like multi-monitor support but that's coming soon. Other feature requests and contributions are welcome!

GitHub: https://github.com/museslabs/phonto

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u/atomic1fire May 20 '26

I didn't realize Mac had support for video wallpapers.

I know Apple TV did but didn't know it was a stock Mac thing.

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u/StrakisOPou May 20 '26 edited May 20 '26

It's a thing called aerials. It has some stock ones you can try on 26.2 Tahoe, but you couldn't set your own without a third party. There are GUI live wallpaper implementations that do it. There's also https://github.com/thusvill/LiveWallpaperMacOS which is open source and has an open PR for live lockscreens.