Live wallpapers are definitely a way to bring life to your lifeless desktops; find out how to make them a reality on Windows 10!
Live wallpapers were all the rage in Windows Vista’s DreamScene. It didn’t help that Vista itself was a serious memory hog, but DreamScene allowed you to use a video clip of a supported format to be set as your living, moving wallpaper.
If you wish to enjoy the same experience in Windows 10, follow our guide as we show you how to set up dynamic, live wallpapers. We will also show you where to find more live wallpapers if you get bored with the initial selection.
P.S. if you like static wallpapers, check out SpotBright to download Windows 10 Spotlight wallpapers.
Getting dynamic wallpapers in Windows 10
Windows 10 doesn’t come with any live wallpapers itself, so you’ll need to install a third-party app first. It’s called Deskscapes [Stardock website]. The program comes with a free 30-day trial, after which you have to pay $10 to permanently own the software.
On launching the program, you will likely be a tad overwhelmed with so many items on screen. You should narrow down your selection to live wallpapers only using the sorting option. This will leave you behind with a selection of wallpapers depicted by a small film reel icon at the bottom right of the preview.
When you have chosen the live desktop wallpaper of your liking, click on the button at the bottom right corner of the application to apply it to a monitor of your choice. If you’re on a single-monitor setup, it’ll give you the option to choose between desktop wallpaper and screensaver.
While we can’t make a video of the live wallpapers in action, you will have to take our word for it that it works.
If you want to play around with settings for each live wallpaper that Deskscape has to offer, clicking on Settings or Effects will allow you to tweak the scenery and apply filters!
Here are the options that you have with settings for one of the wallpapers.
Here are some of the effects you can apply to the scene to give it some extra life.
The Performance Trade-off.
Keep in mind that there is a trade off. You can see a rise ~8-10% in CPU / Memory usage. Below are some comparison shots.
With a live wallpaper running in the background (note the CPU usage)
With a stationary wallpaper (PNG)
If you play run of the mill light games such as Hearthstone or the like, it would be safe to set a moving wallpaper.
However, if you are an intense gamer, and don’t appreciate experiencing unexpected frame drops, consider turning off the wallpaper until you finish gaming.
While these wallpapers are a great addition to your system, it is highly advised you make the most of your trial period by doing your daily tasks and measuring for yourself if the $10 at the end of your 30-day trial is justified.
If you are curious about adding more “dreams” (the proprietary file format for DeskScapes wallpapers), you can download them by going to WinCustomize.
When you go to the website, select a dream that you would like to download and once it’s downloaded, double click on it to add it to your library in DeskScape.
You can see the stars wallpaper added to my gallery.
As someone who dreaded the intense memory consumption of Windows Vista and DreamScene, it is good to see that deskscape is lighter on system resources with current laptops and systems offering 8 GB of RAM and good quality processors right out of the box.
It is highly recommended you use a live wallpaper on your desktop for a week or so without changing it and seeing if you have any significant loss in your gaming or otherwise routine performances.
Live Wallpapers will also consume significant battery life when taken off charging, so it is highly advised to use static wallpapers when your device is unplugged from charging if you wish to preserve energy for your use.
If you found this to be helpful, let us know in the comments section if you have better recommendations for a program and what are your thoughts on deskscape.