Wallper 1.3.5: Autostart, Async Installs and Backend Previews

This is the largest quality-of-life release Wallper has shipped, and most of it is invisible by design.

The theme is work happening somewhere other than in front of you: installs that no longer block the interface, previews generated off your machine entirely, and a startup flow that gets itself configured without a conversation.

Autostart, Handled Properly

There is a new autostart flow. Wallper can launch with macOS and sit quietly in the background, and it now asks about this at first launch and can enable itself right after install rather than waiting for you to find the setting.

The detail that matters: when Wallper starts with the system, the main window stays hidden for the first minute or so. Login is the busiest moment on a Mac, with every startup item competing for attention at once, and an app that opens a window then is an app you close without reading. Staying out of the way until the machine has settled is simply better manners.

The notification permission prompt also moved to a more meaningful moment, rather than appearing during that same crowded first minute when the answer is always no.

Autostart was introduced in 1.0.9; this is where it became reliable enough to enable by default. There is one more default worth knowing: wallpapers are now off when your Mac is on battery, extending the Battery-Aware Mode behaviour to be the standard rather than an option you find later.

Installs That Do Not Freeze the App

Setting a wallpaper used to block the main thread, which is the technical way of saying the app froze while it worked.

Not for long, but it was a beachball at the exact instant you had committed to a choice, and it made the app feel fragile in the moment you most wanted it to feel solid. The wallpaper installation pipeline was reworked so this happens asynchronously. The interface stays responsive throughout, and the chance of a black screen when applying a wallpaper or switching modes is substantially reduced.

Previews Move to the Backend

Preview generation now happens on the backend rather than on your Mac.

Every user was previously generating their own thumbnails for the same shared library, which is a great deal of duplicated video decoding across a great many machines to produce identical results. Generating each preview once, centrally, means thumbnails are consistent for everyone, appear faster, and cost your Mac nothing.

This finishes the work started in 1.3.2, where the local preview pipeline was rebuilt. It turned out the right fix was to stop doing it locally.

Screen Saver and Lock Screen

The screen saver is properly integrated on macOS 26, built on Apple's new aerials catalog. Legacy screen saver handling on macOS below 26 is partially fixed and considerably more reliable.

This release also introduced lock screen wallpapers. That did not survive contact with the world: the mechanism on older macOS depended on workarounds that could not be made dependable, and 1.3.5.1 walked it back so lock screen support now requires macOS 26. Worth reading if you are on macOS 15 or earlier.

Stability, Networking and Polish

Settings sync was refactored to be more robust, and network usage was cleaned up so background requests are leaner. Overall responsiveness is better, particularly when switching quickly between wallpapers and views.

The Explore tab received a visual refresh with subtle animation. Card logic was rebuilt so hover, preview and actions behave predictably. Fullscreen view launch is very slightly delayed, which sounds like a regression and is not: the delay lets the transition complete cleanly rather than starting mid-animation. Several Settings toggles were fixed to reflect their actual state rather than a remembered one.

Upload and publication were stabilised end to end, continuing from 1.3.4.

An Extra Week on Expired Trials

Everyone whose trial had already run out gets another 7 days.

A trial that expired across the period when installs froze the interface, previews were unreliable and publishing did not report its status was not a fair test of the product. Update, restart the app, and the extra week is there.

Details of plans are on the pricing page.