# glouw/paperview

A high performance X11 animated wallpaper setter

Repository: https://github.com/glouw/paperview
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/paperview
Homepage: https://glouw.com/2020/08/02/Paperview.html
Language: C
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Topics: animated, wallpaper, desktop, linux, x11, sdl2
Last push: 2023-03-05T06:23:27+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 32/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 35, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 2224, "days_push": 1277, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1488, forks 47 (observed 2026-08-28T04:04:52.093768+00:00)

## What it is
Paperview is a high-performance animated wallpaper setter for Linux X11 desktops, written in C using SDL2 to render BMP frame sequences onto the root window. It supports multi-monitor setups with per-monitor scenes and runs efficiently at 60fps with low CPU usage.

## Use cases
- set an animated wallpaper on Linux X11
- play a BMP frame sequence as desktop background
- show different animations on each monitor
- run animated wallpaper as a background daemon
- create custom animated scenes from GIFs

## When to choose
- you use X11 on Linux and want a lightweight animated wallpaper
- you need multi-monitor support with different scenes per screen
- you want low CPU/GPU overhead compared to looping feh scripts

## When to avoid
- you use Wayland instead of X11
- you run a compositor like Picom or Compton that overwrites the root window
- you need PNG or video formats rather than BMP frames
- you are on Windows or macOS

## Facets
- artifact type: cli-tool
- maturity: maintenance
- function: graphics, animation, gui
- domain: desktop-applications, graphics, operating-systems
- platform: cli, cpp
- tags: animated-wallpaper, x11, sdl2, desktop-customization, bmp, linux

## Member repositories
- glouw/paperview (main) score 32

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:04:52.093768+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T04:33:44.092409+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/glouw/paperview (fetched 2026-08-28T04:04:52.093768+00:00, sha 1e7f5957b78b)
  - homepage: https://glouw.com/2020/08/02/Paperview.html (fetched 2026-08-29T11:39:43.509770+00:00, sha 91251b55d764)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.