Live Paper RS

Play videos as your desktop background on Wayland

Support by giving your ⭐!

Render any mpv-playable video (or stream) onto the background layer of a Wayland compositor.

preview.mp4

Requirements

• A Wayland compositor supporting wlr-layer-shell (Sway, Hyprland, Niri, etc.)
• mpv (libmpv), working EGL/OpenGL drivers (Mesa or vendor)

Installation

Arch Linux (AUR)

with an AUR helpers

paru -S live-paper

yay live-paper

or manually

git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/live-paper.git
cd live-paper && makepkg -si

Ubuntu / Debian / Others

No prebuilt package yet; use the prebuilt GitHub release binary (no compilation needed):

sudo apt-get update
# Assuming your already have Wayland deps
sudo apt-get install -y libmpv2

curl -L https://github.com/sinder38/live-paper-rs/releases/latest/download/live-paper-linux-x86_64.tar.gz | tar xz
sudo install -Dm755 live-paper-linux-x86_64 /usr/local/bin/live-paper

crates.io

Builds from source; the libmpv, EGL and Wayland development headers must be present.

cargo install live-paper

GitHub Releases

Prebuilt dynamically-linked x86_64 binary (still needs mpv, Mesa and Wayland installed at runtime):

curl -L https://github.com/sinder38/live-paper-rs/releases/latest/download/live-paper-linux-x86_64.tar.gz | tar xz
install -Dm755 live-paper-linux-x86_64 ~/.local/bin/live-paper

Quick start

# Play a video file as your wallpaper
live-paper ~/Videos/wallpaper.mp4

# Any mpv-compatible source works, including streams
live-paper "https://example.com/clip.mp4"

# No argument -> falls back to the config file, then a built-in test pattern
live-paper

Run it from your compositor's autostart (e.g. exec-once = live-paper ~/Videos/wallpaper.mp4 in Hyprland).

Configuration

Is optional, every field has a default. Config lives at $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/live-paper/config.toml (usually ~/.config/live-paper/config.toml). Copy the sample to get started:

mkdir -p ~/.config/live-paper
# from the AUR/release install:
cp /usr/share/doc/live-paper/config.example.toml ~/.config/live-paper/config.toml

See config.example.toml for all options (video path, playback speed, mute, hardware decoding, mpv passthrough, layer settings). Pass a specific file with -c/--config-path.

Additional Acknowledgments

• https://github.com/GhostNaN/mpvpaper — inspiration and original mpvpaper project
• https://codeberg.org/LGFae/awww — a more mature project for static wallpapers with transitions

TODO

1. Daemon persistence and dynamic wallpaper swap
2. Publish on more package managers
3. Flag ignored config options

License

^{Licensed under the MIT license.}
_{Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted for inclusion in live-paper-rs by you, as defined in the MIT, shall be licensed as above, without any additional terms or conditions.}