How to use a screensaver as your desktop background in OS X

by Ross McKillop on May 30, 2007

Mac

I recently stumbled across a terrific little program called Wallsaver, which lets you change your desktop wallpaper into any of your installed screensavers. Keep reading for details and screenshots…

  1. The installation is very straight forward - just drag Wallsaver.app to your Applications folder. Launch it as you would any other program.
  2. You’ll be presented with its painfully easy to use interface. Click Activate to start it.

  3. Your desktop background/wallpaper will change to whatever screensaver you have enabled at the time.


    4. Wallsaver in action (Firefox is transparent)

  4. At this point you can quit Wallsaver and your screensaver will remain as your background. If at any point you wish to return to your normal background, simple re-launch Wallsaver and click the Restore button.


    5. Back to normal

  5. Though enabling Wallsaver will use some CPU, it’s actually quite minimal. Try as I might, I couldn’t get it to use more than 7% using the Flurry screensaver (2GHz 1st gen MacBook Pro).

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    { 7 comments… read them below or add one }

    1 Victor 05.30.07 at 8:47 pm

    hey that looks like a really awesome program! i couldn’t help to notice though how cool your desktop is set up…how did you set up your desktop so that all your active applications would be displayed in the bottom right hand corner?!

    2 Ross McKillop 05.30.07 at 9:11 pm

    Victor -

    http://www.simplehelp.net/2007/01/01/how-to-re-position-or-change-the-os-x-dock-alignment/

    :)

    Ross

    3 chet 06.13.07 at 10:07 am

    This is pretty cool, but I had problems accessing my Dock a few times, so I stopped using it.

    4 Andrei Stoleru 06.24.07 at 10:12 am

    Hi
    I know a Terminal command that does that - I suppose this app uses that. Couldn’t get the processor to a 7 percent? Try my screen saver … ;)
    http://www.andreistoleru.com/downloads/rainbow

    5 Andrés 06.24.07 at 7:34 pm

    Hi, what’s the name of the 2nd screensaver used in the “back to normal” link? Where can I find it?

    6 Ross McKillop 06.25.07 at 6:50 pm

    Andres (and anyone else who may be curious),

    Sorry for the delay in my response.

    The 2nd screen doesn’t have a screensaver, but if you’re referring to my desktop wallpaper, it’s ecto graphite - which can be found here:http://vieuxfuret.free.fr/wpp/ (along with all of the other ecto wallpapers - they come in different colors).

    7 Magdalena 06.18.08 at 12:52 am

    Wenn ich wallsaver aktiviere friert mir irgendwie google notifier ein. D.h. bei google notifier unter “check now” steht dann z.B. “checked 30 minutes ago”.
    Sobald ich wallsaver beende kontrolliert er meine mails wieder regelmäßig.
    Hat zufällig wer tips?

    Lg

    magdy

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