DeskChanger

DeskChanger is a gnome-shell wallpaper slideshow extension with multiple profile support. The extension allows you to switch profiles on the fly without reloading the extension. The service runner will also stay running when the lock screen is active, allowing wallpaper changes to still happen at specific times or intervals.

Screenshots

Requirements

The requirements are for the most recent version of the plugin. Previous releases support older versions of gnome-shell.

• gettext (for translations)
• gnome-shell 45 or higher
• make (not required - to build without make just follow the steps in the Makefile and run the commands manually)
• yarn (for installing the necessary tools to compile the TypeScript)

Install

First clone the repo and run the following install instructions.

git clone -b develop [email protected]:BigE/desk-changer.git
cd desk-changer
make all

Once the make process is complete, you will have a dist folder where the compiled JS extension lives. You can then run make install to install the compiled extension to your local directory. If you want to install it to the system, run make as root with DESTDIR or just copy the [email protected] folder to your /usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions/ folder.

# make DESTDIR=/usr install

OR

# cp -r dist /usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions/[email protected]

Then restart gnome-shell and enable the extension. Use the preferences to add more profiles and wallpapers. The default profile provided by the extension will recursively load the /usr/share/backgrounds folder with rotation enabled for every 30 minutes.

General Information

Daemon

The daemon is now part of the extension itself and has no command line interface. The only interface available to the daemon now is the DBus interface.

DBUS Interface

IMPORTANT - The DBUS Interface has changed since version 36 of the extension

The DBUS Interface name was previously org.gnome.Shell.Extensions.DeskChanger.Daemon since it ran as an external program separate from the extension. Now everything is part of the extension and there is not an external daemon. This is reflected in the new name of the service org.gnome.Shell.Extensions.DeskChanger.Service

The DBus interface is available for interaction with the service itself. The interface exposes most of the service runner as well as read only properties for pulling information from the service and current profile. There are also signals available for specific events within the service.

Name: org.gnome.Shell.Extensions.DeskChanger.Service

Path: /org/gnome/Shell/Extensions/DeskChanger/Service

Methods

• Load(String profile) Loads the specified profile and respective locations
• Next() Switches to the next wallpaper, returns the uri
• Prev() Switches to the previous wallpaper, returns the uri
• Restart() Automatically issues a Stop/Start, service must be running
• Start() Enables automatic rotation and makes the service available
• Stop() Disables automatic rotation and makes the service unavailable for use.

Properties

• GameMode - Read only boolean value if GameMode is detected and enabled
• History - Read only array of history
• Preview - Read only URI of the next wallpaper
• Queue - Read only array of the queue
• Running - Read only boolean value if the daemon is stopped or started

Signals

• Changed - Emitted when the wallpaper is changed, uri to wallpaper file
• Start - Emitted when the service is started
• Stop - Emitted when the service is stopped

dconf-editor

To view the settings in dconf-editor, just use the GSETTINGS_SCHEMA_DIR= environment variable to open dconf-editor with the extensions schema available to the editor.

$ GSETTINGS_SCHEMA_DIR=~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/[email protected]/schemas/ dconf-editor /org/gnome/shell/extensions/desk-changer

Then navigate to /org/gnome/shell/extensions/desk-changer and you will see all of the available settings for the extension and daemon.