First released to the public in October of 2016, Wallpaper Engine (WE) has made some promising strides since its first conception. Since it was released, the program has been optimized to support multiple monitors, 2D rendering, video rendering, and it can even run some small Unity commands/programs (which would be very useful for interactive and graphic intensive backgrounds).
WE can also use a dedicated graphics card to simulate small video fragments using 3D models. And the best thing about it: people all over the planet can make and share wallpapers for everyone else to use.
A complicated concept made simple
If a lot of the stuff that I stated above seems a little too techy for you, do not worry. This program is for all users; from the engineers that have lived in a CPU for decades, to the other end of the spectrum where folks have maybe seen a computer only once or twice. If you can navigate to this article, then you'd easily be able to use WE. The program comes with some default backgrounds, most of which are very appealing and aesthetically pleasing.
They function without problems, and some are interactive, which essentially makes your desktop a fun toy to play with for a few hours.
How customizable is it?
As stated before, the application allows you to make your own wallpaper from scratch. There are a few ways to do this, one of the easier ways would be to upload a picture into the program. From there, one would be able to customize some 2D effects to apply to the image. After finishing the customization, it would be uploaded onto the WE workshop where everyone else would be able to either download it for free, or for a price that the uploader of the project would choose. One would also be able to import either 3D objects, videos, or 2D objects into WE to create the background they so desire.
Will it make my computer lag?
In addition to that, one would be able to import some Unity scripts into the Wallpaper Engine to make interactive backgrounds. The possibilities of interactive desktop backgrounds makes WE one of the most customizable applications on the web. There is also an option to link a specific web page to WE, however, this would degrade computer performance. When WE uses the recommend video or 2D/3D objects settings, the program uses only about 1-3% of your CPU usage and requires less resources than it takes to run Google Chrome. So, even the most basic computers will be able to run Wallpaper Engine without even a hint of a problem.
Wallpaper Engine is available on Steam for only $4 while it stays in Early Access.