Wallper 1.2: A Native macOS Screen Saver, Not an App Pretending to Be One
An Apple-notarized screen saver that macOS runs itself. It needs no administrator rights, uses almost nothing, and keeps working even when Wallper is closed.
There are two ways to put moving video on a Mac while it sits idle.
The first is to keep an app running, watch for the machine to go quiet, and then throw a full-screen window over everything. It works. It also means a process running all day waiting for a moment that may not come, and a window that is only pretending to be a screen saver.
The second is to build an actual screen saver, hand it to macOS, and let the system take it from there.
Wallper 1.2 does the second one.
What "Native" Means Here
macOS has its own screen saver system. It decides when the machine is idle, which saver to show, how it behaves on multiple displays, and what happens when you move the mouse. Apple's own aerial footage runs through exactly this machinery.
The Wallper screen saver is a real bundle installed into that system. macOS launches it, macOS stops it, and macOS owns its lifecycle.
Three things follow from that, and they are the whole reason this was worth building properly.
It is Apple-notarized. The bundle has been submitted to Apple and checked for malicious content, which is the same process every legitimate Mac app goes through. Gatekeeper recognises it. You are not clicking past a warning telling you the software cannot be verified.
It does not need administrator rights. Installing it does not ask you to hand elevated privileges to an app, and it does not ask you to disable the protections macOS ships with. Any workflow that requires switching off System Integrity Protection to make a wallpaper move is a workflow to walk away from.
It runs without Wallper. Quit the app entirely and the screen saver still works, because macOS is the thing running it. Wallper installs it and then gets out of the way.
Designed for Near-Zero Resources
A screen saver runs at the one moment nobody is there to appreciate efficiency, which is exactly why it deserves attention.
An idle Mac should be drifting toward its low-power states. If a screen saver holds the machine at a high clock rate for twenty minutes while you make coffee, it has quietly turned every break into a cost, on a laptop it may be doing that on battery.
The Wallper saver is built for as close to zero overhead as a video-playing screen saver can get. It plays smoothly on modern Macs while leaving the system as close to idle as the footage allows.
This is the same principle behind the engine rewrite in 1.0.8, applied to the part of the day when you are not at the machine. Current figures are on the performance page.
This Is an Alpha, and We Are Saying So
The core works well. It installs, it runs, it looks the way it should.
It is also an early build, and there will be rough edges we have not found yet, particularly across unusual display arrangements and older macOS versions. We would rather ship it labelled honestly and fix what you find than sit on it for another two months polishing against guesses.
If something misbehaves, the troubleshooting guide is the place to start, and reports genuinely do shape what gets fixed first.
Setting your own videos as screen savers arrived shortly after this, in 1.2.1. If you are comparing this to Apple's built-in aerials, the difference from the Aerial screen saver covers it.
