Frescolive wallpapers for Linux, made easy

Fresco is a live-wallpaper app for Linux. Pick any looping video (mp4/webm/mkv), animated GIF, image, image slideshow, or multi-video playlist, click Set, and close the app — your wallpaper keeps playing and comes back on login. It runs as a proper GTK4/libadwaita desktop app you install from a .deb, with GPU hardware-accelerated playback so CPU stays near zero. Windows has Wallpaper Engine and macOS has Lively; Fresco is the simple, open-source equivalent for Linux.

• Any media — looping video, animated GIF, static image, image slideshow, or a multi-video playlist.
• Hardware-accelerated — GPU video decode (VA-API / NVDEC) keeps CPU near zero without degrading quality.
• Drag-to-crop editor — frame exactly the region you want.
• Wallpaper library — saved thumbnails, recently-used, and search.
• Set & forget — close the app and the wallpaper keeps playing; it's restored automatically on login.
• Battery-aware — pause on battery, or pause and resume any time.
• Multi-monitor — a different wallpaper per display.

Fresco ships two binaries: fresco, the GTK4/libadwaita GUI you can close, and frescod, a lightweight daemon that paints a desktop-level X11 window with an embedded mpv instance per monitor. Because the heavy lifting is mpv with hardware decode, even a 4K video wallpaper costs almost no CPU. Run frescod --check any time for hardware-decode diagnostics.

An X11 session is required today. Wayland support is on the roadmap.

One-liner:

curl -fsSL https://github.com/DibbayajyotiRoy/fresco/releases/latest/download/install.sh | bash

Or download the .deb from Releases and double-click it. Then launch Fresco → + Add → pick a video → drag a crop frame → Set as Wallpaper → close the window.

• Is there a Wallpaper Engine for Linux?

  Yes — Fresco is a free, open-source live-wallpaper app for Linux that works like Wallpaper Engine: pick a video and set it as your animated desktop background.

• How do I set a video as my wallpaper on Ubuntu, Pop!_OS, or Debian?

  Install the Fresco .deb, open it, click + Add, choose your video, and click Set as Wallpaper.

• Does it work on Wayland or GNOME?

  It runs on GNOME and any X11 session today (Pop!_OS, Ubuntu, Mint, Debian). Wayland support is on the roadmap.

• Will a video wallpaper drain my battery or CPU?

  Fresco uses GPU hardware decoding so CPU stays near zero, and it can automatically pause on battery.

• What media formats are supported?

  mp4, webm, mkv, avi, and mov video, plus animated GIFs, static images (jpg/png/webp), folders as slideshows, and multi-video playlists.

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