Full-screen app
When a window goes full-screen — a film, a game, Keynote — playback stops. You'd never see the wallpaper anyway.
Performance. Cinematic wallpapers, laptop-friendly cost
A live 4K wallpaper should feel weightless. Wallper hands every frame to the Mac's dedicated video hardware and draws straight into the desktop layer — so your battery, fans, and apps barely notice it's there.
4K HEVC
GPU video engine
Display
CPU~4%
GPU~62%
Your GPU does the heavy lifting
Every frame is handed to the Mac's built-in video engine through native AVFoundation. The CPU never software-decodes 4K — which is why idle usage stays in the low single digits, even on a fanless MacBook Air. Smooth motion, cool chassis, quiet fans.
95
CPU headroom≤5% used at 4K HEVC100
Hardware decodeH.264 / HEVC on the GPU97
Battery friendly1–3% extra drainNumbers you can actually feel
A live 4K loop should cost almost nothing. On Apple Silicon, Wallper leaves the overwhelming majority of your CPU free, adds only a few percent of battery drain, and hands every frame to the GPU's dedicated video decoder. Fans stay quiet, the chassis stays cool.
One engine, every surface
The same decoding core renders into the desktop, the lock screen, a native screensaver, and behind the menu bar — without compositing a panel over your workspace. Your apps, widgets, and icons stay fully interactive; nothing intercepts clicks or steals GPU time.
The cheapest frame is the one that's never decoded
Wallper stops playing the moment it isn't worth it — four conditions, all configurable.
On battery power
Unplugged, Wallper freezes on the current frame and shows it as a static image. Re-enable always-on playback in Preferences if you prefer.
CPU load above ~80%
If your Mac is already working hard, Wallper steps aside and gives the cores back to your real workload.
Display sleep
When the screen sleeps, decoding stops entirely. No frames are drawn to a display nobody is looking at.
Where it runs
One universal binary, tuned for the whole modern Mac lineup.
- macOSMinimum supported operating system
- 14.6 (Sonoma) or newer
- Lock-screen live videoAnimated wallpaper on the lock screen
- macOS 26 (Tahoe) or newer
- ArchitectureNative universal binary, no Rosetta
- Apple Silicon & Intel
- DecodingHow frames are turned into pixels
- Hardware-accelerated H.264 / HEVC (AVFoundation)
- PermissionsWhat macOS will ask you to allow
- None required
- OfflineWorks without an internet connection
- Wallpapers you've already set keep playing offline — downloading new ones needs a connection
84K+Macs running Wallper
3K+live wallpapers in the library
Figures are typical results from internal testing on Apple Silicon at 4K HEVC with default settings. Real numbers vary with your chip, resolution, number of displays, and whether sound or always-on playback is enabled — so treat these as honest ballparks, not guarantees.