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Wallpaper Master has a good user interface with many useful features. The program can be set to auto start at windows logon or auto close after 30 seconds to save system resources.
It allows you to categorise the lists of wallpapers and rate each wallpaper so that better ones are chosen more often. It's easy to add files to the list or simply monitor a directory to update the list of wallpapers.
Wallpapers can be set to change when windows starts or on certain intervals in sequential order, shuffle mode, or random order according to ratings. The position of each wallpaper can be set to center, stretch, tile or resize as well.
On the downside, the program allows adding up to 5,000 images per category in the free version, but that's good enough for most average users.
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Wallpaper Cycler Lite offers you to change the wallpaper on startup with other features such as auto shutdown, timer and cycle wallpapers.
This program manages wallpapers in multi-level categories, which can be linked to folders on your hard disk to automatically detect new wallpapers. Position of the wallpapers can be set to default, center, tile, stretch to fill, stretch to height, stretch to width, stretch with or without aspect to each wallpaper in the categories.
It includes a mode to show a slide show of all your wallpapers in the categories. It can also monitor your CPU load when it wants to cycle and prevent cycling when your CPU is too busy. This free program shows some other features in the context menu but they are only enabled in the pay version. These restricted features include wallpaper layouts, tags, search folders, etc.
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.jpg) If you don't like this restriction and prefer a simpler program, EvJO Wallpaper Changer is good choice. It changes your wallpapers at every startup, once a day, at sunrise or sunset, or other time intervals.
This program consists of several options, such as auto start, auto close, changing the wallpaper when the program starts or closes, changing the wallpaper in random order or in sequential order of the wallpapers in the list.
Position of the wallpapers can be set to auto, center, tile or stretch based on a global setting instead of individual wallpapers.
It has a clean and intuitive user interface, easy to use, and complete with extra features such as downloading photos from flickr, search photos by tags, text or user photos, draw a company logo or calendar on the desktop, etc. However, this program does not support synchronisation of wallpapers with folders and the slide show feature.
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WallMaster is another alternative which has a simple and intuitive control panel to customize your desktop wallpaper conveniently. It allows you to change wallpaper on startup, auto shutdown after the wallpaper changes, with other features such as shuffling wallpapers and timer.
A double click on the program's icon in the tray, the wallpaper changes instantly, a right click shows up a full context menu for mastering your desktop wallpaper, hiding icons and others.
With this program, you can also create, save, load or append a showlist of your favorite wallpapers with an option to disallow duplicate items. Each wallpaper in the showlist can be set to tile, center, fit to screen, custom or auto fit.
On the down side, this free program allows a maximum of 50 wallpapers to be appended to each showlist. Other features such as folders synchronisation and slide show features are not supported.
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| Looking for a wallpaper changer with a calendar? |
MuralPix Manager is well worth trying. It offers a possibility to make a frame around an image as part of the wallpaper. The frame color is calculated so that it corresponds to overall image color tone. Further, a calendar can be painted automatically to the wallpaper with various settings.
It allows you to add folders and auto detect changes of files in the folders, set time intervals of changing wallpapers, etc. The wallpapers in the folders can be used by a screen saver included in the program.
The program can be set to auto start or run in a silent mode, but auto close is not included. Besides, its user interface is not as good as some other programs, and settings of margins and images apply to all rather than individual wallpaper files.
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The program supports multiple monitors and features setting auto exit, time intervals, selecting images from the folders or from other online resources such as Flickr, Picasa Web Albums, Facebook, etc.
Wallpapers can be set to center, stretch, scale, in a thumbnail mosaic, a four-picture montage or a snapshot scrapbook. This setting applies to all but not individual wallpapers.
A picture browser is included to view images either downloaded or used in montage, but no slide show is available.
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| Looking for a multi-platform wallpaper changer? |
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Wally is a good wallpaper changer running on Win32, Linux and Mac OS X platforms. The author of the software re-uses the idea from John's Background Switcher (JBS) and fulfils the universe of wallpaper changers not covered by JBS.
The user interface looks close to that of JBS, but it allows wallpaper position to set to centered, tiled, center tiled, centered maxpert, tiled maxpert, scaled, center auto fit or scale and crop. The setting of positions applies to all wallpapers in the folders.
The program supports features such as time intervals, selecting images from the folders or from online resources, displaying images' EXIF data in system tray tool-tip, saving downloaded photos, run-time folder change detection, etc. No auto exit of the program is noted.
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Came across this wallpaper changer called WALLY in a Lifehacker article. The creator says the software is inspired by John's background switcher which is reviewed here, and it is very similar in appearance..
The best feature for me was that it is cross platform.. Runs on Linux/Windows/Mac... I tried it out on Ubuntu Karmic, and it worked much better than any of the other changers that I tried out...
Also the creator says that Wally doesn't require .Net unlike JBS..
What do you think about it??
Thanks for the link. I'll try it out on my recently installed Ubuntu 9.10.
[Update]
I've tested it and it runs quite well on Ubuntu 9.10. Added in the article.
There seems to be a new kid on the block.
I'm probably ever-so slightly biased towards this as a friend of mine wrote it :)
You can find it over here: http://the-asylum.com in the software section.
It's extremely clean interface and clean program. Uses 0% CPU when idling - jumps to around 1 when changing but only for a split second. I don't even notice it running.
Also supports dual monitor and is totally 100% free with no restrictions on usage.
Also seems like the source code may be up for sale soon :)
Strongly suggest you look at John's Background Switcher. Has dual monitor support, will pull photos from flickr, phanfare, smugmugpicasa, facebook, yahoo, or any RSS feed. You can make photo montages or mosaics, or simply have it display one image. Very flexible, and free with no limitations.
Thanks for the suggestion. I've added it in the review.
CoreDownload Free Wallpaper Changer.. works a treat :D
Isn't it look like Adolix's wallpaper changer? A copy of the same interface and options?
I didn't see any reviews for WebShots in your forum. I've been using WebShots for several years now. It's the best free program I've found out there to date. No restrictions on the amount of wallpapers it will allow you to add to the program, either. The "free" version allows you to download 5 photos per day. You can also download any wallpaper from any site on the web quickly and easily. It doesn't interfere with the OS and it has a built in screen saver (you can use WebShots to use the entire photo collection saved on your hard disk as a screen saver) and calender you can place on your desktop. Unlike most of these "wallpaper" changing programs, it will detect any digital camera and you can download your images straight from the camera to your hard drive and then install them into the program. One of the best features of the program is the ability set the settings so the wallpaper never changes. If you want a good program that doesn't contain any spyware/adware/malware, etc. then check this baby out. You will NOT be disappointed.
Thanks for the recommendation. I'll check it out soon.
Every site offering free Walpaper's I have visited are all reported by the McAfee site advisor as being dangerous sites with unwanted downloads /malware , does anyone know of any site that are safe to use I know these sites are offering " free downloads " but I have searched loads of sites claiming to be free without finding any that are safe .
Thank's
Wallpapers infected with malware code are a huge problem. These four links spread over as many years in time scale give just a flavor of what you can expect.
http://www.emsisoft.com/en/malware/?Adware.Win32.Space+Wallpaper
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070701003453AABUwpd
http://forums.techguy.org/malware-removal-hijackthis-logs/737364-red-bio...
http://forums.whatthetech.com/Your_System_Infected_Wallpaper_can_t_chang...
This also serves as a reminder that your security software will not always protect you from stuff you choose to download yourself. My advice would be to never visit any site marked in other than green by either WOT or LinkExtend.
Internet safety freeware in general is featured here:
http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/best-internet-safety-check.htm
Other than that there are sites like this one which offer to do this process for you.
http://www.wallpaperama.com/forums/safest-websites-for-virus-free-wallpa...
You still need to take great care with how you source wallpapers for your collection.
I just posted a comment here about WebShots. It doesn't interfere with any antivirus programs and operates smoothly and effortlessly within Windows and any third party firewall. WebShots can be found on SnapFiles.com.
I was searching a free wallpaper changer the other day and found bionix wallpaper (http://www.bionixwallpaper.com/). I have not tested this program yet and would like to know if anybody has used it in the past. It claims that it only uses 1.5M of RAM! and it's portable.
1st: not affliated with bionix, review is my own opinion of 2 days usage
2nd: not really fond of wallpaper changers
3rd: the lite version is free - with some minor (imo) limitations
4th: has dual-monitor support (i don't need, but, some people do)
5th: small resources used (mem < 3mb)
6th: i like the interface (some don't); skin support (fun, not necessary)
7th: yes, lite version does add it's "Enhanced by Bionix Wallpaper" in upper left corner of image - it's medium black font (unobtrusive imo) - probably not visible in dark wallpapers.
8th: doesn't support categories (it seems), but, can have different playlists for different occasions - similar to categories, just not as convenient
9th: can set different time intervals
10th: many other configureable options
being not fond of wallpaper changers, i find i do like this one (so far :) )
hope this is informative & helpful
Not a good choice. Only lite version is free. Limited features, add its Logo over your wallpaper, and you can't disable it!
I just downloaded and installed the ZIP version of the wallpaper master and it changed the value of the following registry key:
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Desktop\Components]
GeneralFlags=dword:00000004
What does 4 mean? And what is the default value of this key? My OS is windows XP MCE. Thanks.
Sorry, I'm no expert in the Registry. But based on the info here, the policy-applied settings of this value is 1 for Win NT Workstation 4.0 DE. I'm not sure if it's the same for Win XP MCE. Neither am I aware of the value 4. You might want to post it to the developer's forum and hopefully their software team can give an answer.
Note: Changing the registry value incorrectly might cause serious problems to the OS.
I would like to add wylik wallpaper manager.
Even though I found it has a bug on vista (the start with windows check box is denied by the my security setting without popup -- an easy bypass is to add it to auto start manually by winpatrol or any other startup controller), the real advantage against many others lies in that the fitting method is much smarter. Many programs simple stretch/center an image to fill in the screen with either distorted image or leave margins, wylik overcomes that.
Other features:
regular interval based changed.
on program start change.
program exit after change.
setting the time out before program exit.
configurable calendar.
...
The effect takes to all images (maybe this can save some space?) Can not auto sync images, can not automatic acquire image from internet. Residential mode take about 11M. For me, these features doesn't matter that much.
Doesn't work for me.
Thanks for the suggestion. I'll give it a try.
which one of these has the smallest cpu usage? I want to use it on an eeepc running xp, so performance becomes much more important than features.
I'd use anyone of them with auto-close (a good feature) after changing wallpaper. cpu usage =0 after close.
(same poster as above)
by the way, all I need is for the program to change wallpaper on startup and then gtfo.
Check out Wallperizer at: http://www.gardenerofthoughts.org/ideas/wallperizer/ . Really worth a look.
aLL tHe BeSt frOM bRaZiL ;)
Great selection, but as with a lot of guides at this site, I can't help but think that best should = the best implementation of software, with emphasis on simplicity, that best fits the need of the average user.
In this case I think 90%+ of users will have their needs met by Cyber-D's Wallpaper Shifter, which really should be the No.1 choice here, based on the criteria I've highlighted above. You can leave it in your quick launch and click when you want a change. If this is too much effort then simply schedule it as a task. Easy, lightweight and effective.
Too many of these articles focus on getting the most bang for your (non existent) buck, empathising programs with the most features, whilst ignoring what the majority of users are actually looking for. Life is complicated enough for most of us. :-)
Just my 2c: We have to review for people with different needs, habits or personal preferences. So we often need to make several recommendations. And it's sometimes difficult to pick a single 'top pick'. Which to choose - The simplest and neatest? Or the most powerful?
Thanks for the great idea. User friendly or ease of use of the programs does form part of the factors being considered in the review.
It's true that we can have multiple top picks to suit certain category of users, just like the ones awarded in BF Digital Image Editor. As for wallpaper changers, I view them as a rather simple utility with a real basic function -- to auto change wallpapers -- which most of the programs here are able to provide, but it's a bonus to the programs if they provide additional useful features without sacrificing good user interface or ease of use of the software.
Any Wallpaper from http://www.anyutils.com/ might be worth a look.
It is a nice and simple one but lacks an important feature, the ability to fit/stretch wallpapers onto the desktop instead of just centering them.
A simple and yet user friendly wallpaper changer. Thanks for the link.
Fun desktop wallpaper changer.
http://fundesktop.com/
I'd also like to suggest Adolix Wallpaper Changer, I still perfer MuralPix but still it's a decent program, it also has a built-in screen capture tool.
http://www.adolix.com/wallpaper-changer/
~Yaser
Thanks Yaser again for suggesting another free and decent program. I'd also prefer MuralPix between this and Adolix Wallpaper Changer. But it could be a good choice for some who like 2-in-1 with a screen capture utility bundled :>)
Added in the list for ease of reference.
Hi, nice site, come here all the time, never post, because no need to, except to maybe say that this is a great site.
Anyway, just like to mention wallpaper master which I've been using for a very long time and never even considered looking for something else.
I just happened to read this and thought it would be here.
Maybe what you got is better. I might try it later, if I get time.
Anyway, this works for me quite well and thought you might like to have a look. http://jamesgart.com/wallpaperchanger/
Thanks for the feedback. Wallpaper Master is one of the top products. Good choice.
Hi, I was a bit worried, when I suggested wallpaper master, thinking the other programs might be better.
I just returned to try out the other programs, and was delightedly suprised to find that wallpaper master is the top pick, so I guess I don't have to try the others.(still might though).
I am so glad that something (the first thing) I suggested not only made the list(which alone would be great), but actually topped it.
I will definitely try to recommend more programs, which is gonna be difficult, 'cause I usually just pay a visit to gizmo's when I need something these days.
If, on the very rare chance, I don't find what I'm looking for here, then I search elswhere.
Thanks again for everything.
Wizzard.
You're welcome to provide me with valuable comments and suggestions from time to time and I would take those into consideration while evaluating a freeware product and updating the article accordingly.
If in any case that you can't find what you're looking for here, you're welcome to post it in our forum here.
I'ms surprised nobody mentioned MuralPix, it's an excellent wallpaper changer with interesting features (frame around images, automatic clipping and scaling, calendar...etc) and of course it's FREE, I been using it for quite some time now and I never had any problems. It works well on XP/Vista.
Website: http://muralpix.com
Many thanks. I'll follow your link.
You're welcomed. I'm glad that you added MuralPix to the list.
Regarding its GUI, it's true that's a bit simplistic but it's clear and non-confusing so I don't consider it a flaw or a drawback.
There's also its speed, since it uses a somewhat unique method it can load a folder containing like a couple of thousand photos in a matter of seconds (not exaggerating), while smiliar applications might crash or freeze from that number.
In any case, given the unique features and amazing speed of MuralPix I'd give it 4.5/5, but that's just my opinion :)
~Yaser
Hi Yaser, your comments are valuable. MuralPix is outstanding for its features such as auto frames and calendar. I personally like these features which I don't find them in other programs, even though this program lacks some other features listed in the Introduction.
Wallpaper Cycler have a overkill memory footprint (mora than 15 megs!). Look at Another Desktop (http://another-desktop.oksoft.es/), full of options and lowest memory usage (less than a meg.)
Too bad it's not in english.
Get CleanMem, you'll be surprised.
Nice list of wallpaper changers.
I suggest to have a look to Caledos Automatic Wallpaper Changer too. I used for years and I very satisfied of it. It have many useful feature like "courtesy background", "What I saw list". Check it out if you have time:-)
Updated in the article for ease of reference. Thanks.
Didn't get a reply back at Daily Tech Treats, so might as well duplicate (with little changes) on the main thread:
I don't get why would you put WallMaster, and EvJO Wallpaper Changer over WallCycler Lite. I mean, if I recall correctly there was a 50 wall limit on Wallmaster free version, and there still might be one today. As for EvJO, I've tried it out, and it is more simpler and better in a few ways, but what I really need that it doesn't have is the stretch to fill tiling in Nuonsoft. What it basically does is stretch and keep the aspect ratio, but instead of filling the blank space with plain colour, it crops out the longer sides to fit it all on the screen. Also, the synchronize feature isn't there (I'll have to manually add the folders, which contain my wallpapers separated by genre, again to update). The interface isn't as good too. Lastly, this program can't seem to support all of my walls (7035 and counting), and crashes when I make it change the wall to the next, or at some other random times. Now I can't even open it. Uninstalled, but found out that it's main process was still running, so I had to kill it, and use Revo Advanced mode.
Good comments. I have added more features needed for the programs in the Introduction Section and re-rated them based on the features.
With this, Wallpaper Cycler Lite is re-rated to be the top choice with folders synchronisation and other features.
Having said that, I rated EvJO Wallpaper Changer to be the second choice considering its overall features. If you select the position of wallpapers to auto, it will fit the wallpapers on the desktop without cropping. On my test, the program still can cope with a load of 8,000 over wallpapers with no issue.
I've been using Wallpaper Changer.De for many years and find it be an excellent program. I like the fact that if you set it to change once per day on start up it does its job and quickly gets out of the way (closes w/o staying the systray to consume resources). However, lately I've been opting to manually change my WP so as to improve Windows load time by limiting the number of apps that run at start up.
One of the ways to speed up startup time is to delay running of some programs. WinPatrol is a free startup manager to do that. See also Best Free Startup Manager.
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