Hyprpaper is a blazing fast wallpaper utility for Hyprland with the ability to dynamically change wallpapers through sockets. It will work on all wlroots-based compositors, though.
Preload will tell Hyprland to load a particular image (supported formats: png, jpg, jpeg, jpeg xl, webp). Wallpaper will apply the wallpaper to the selected output (`monitor` is the monitor's name, easily can be retrieved with `hyprctl monitors`. You can leave it empty to set all monitors without an active wallpaper. You can also use `desc:` followed by the monitor's description without the (PORT) at the end)
Preload does exactly what it says. It loads the entire wallpaper into memory. This can result in around 8 - 20MB of mem usage. It is not recommended to preload every wallpaper you have, as it will be a) taking a couple seconds at the beginning to load and b) take 100s of MBs of disk and RAM usage.
Preload is meant only for situations in which you want a wallpaper to switch INSTANTLY when you issue a wallpaper keyword (e.g. wallpaper per workspace)
In any and all cases when you don't mind waiting 300ms for the wallpaper to change, consider making a script that:
If your wallpapers are stored in *~/Pictures*, then make sure you have already preloaded the desired wallpapers in hyprpaper.conf.
*~/.config/hypr/hyprpaper.conf*
```
preload = ~/Pictures/myepicpng.png
preload = ~/Pictures/myepicpngToo.png
preload = ~/Pictures/myepicpngAlso.png
#... continue as desired, but be mindful of the impact on memory.
```
In the actual configuration for Hyprland, *hyprland.conf*, variables can be set for ease of reading and to be used as shortcuts in the bind command. The following example uses $w shorthand wallpaper variables:
Remember in Hyprland we can bind more than one action to a key so in the case where we'd like to change the wallpaper when we switch workspace we have to ensure that the actions are bound to the same key such as...
*~/.config/hypr/hyprland.conf*
```
bind=SUPER,1,workspace,1 #Superkey + 1 switches to workspace 1
bind=SUPER,1,exec,$w1 #SuperKey + 1 switches to wallpaper $w1 on DP-1 as defined in the variable
bind=SUPER,2,workspace,2 #Superkey + 2 switches to workspace 2
bind=SUPER,2,exec,$w2 #SuperKey + 2 switches to wallpaper $w2 on DP-1 as defined in the variable
bind=SUPER,3,workspace,3 #Superkey + 3 switches to workspace 3
bind=SUPER,3,exec,$w3 #SuperKey + 3 switches to wallpaper $w3 on DP-1 as defined in the variable
Because the default behavior in Hyprland is to also switch the workspace whenever movetoworkspace is used to move a window to another workspace you may want to include the following:
Since the IPC has to tick every now and then, and poll in the background, battery life might be a tiny bit worse with IPC on. If you want to fully disable it, use
If you use a lot of wallpapers, consider unloading those that you no longer need. This will mean you need to load them again if you wish to use them for a second time, but will free the memory used by the preloaded bitmap. (Usually 8 - 20MB, depending on the resolution)
You can issue a `hyprctl hyprpaper unload [PATH]` to do that.
For other compositors, the socket works like socket1 of Hyprland, and is located in `/tmp/hypr/.hyprpaper.sock` (this path only when Hyprland is not running!)
