Make Your Omarchy Desktop Move - Motion Wallpapers V2

Your Omarchy desktop is already beautiful. Now make it move.

Motion wallpapers have been on my Git for a while but a lot has changed since the original video. In this one I walk through the updated installer, show you how to use it, and then fire up DaVinci Resolve to create custom animated wallpapers from the static theme images that ship with Omarchy.

HOW IT WORKS

One curl command installs it. Type "motion wallpaper" from your app launcher and you get a simple interface — pick a video file, hit start, and your desktop wallpaper is now a looping video. Turn on auto-start and it survives reboots. Stop it and your previous static wallpaper comes back.

It handles multi-monitor setups too. Pick different videos for different screens, or leave one monitor as a static wallpaper and animate the other. Your choice.

Keep your video files small — 50-60MB MP4s or AV1 files are ideal. When you go full screen over the wallpaper, the video pauses automatically so it's not eating resources while you work.

WHERE TO GET VIDEOS

Moobile is a great source for pre-made looping wallpaper videos. There's also tons of anime-style motion wallpapers floating around if that's your thing. But the real fun is making your own.

MAKING YOUR OWN IN DAVINCI RESOLVE

I take two of the static wallpaper images from Omarchy themes and animate them live in the video.

For the first one — the Luma theme — I use the Light Rays effect in the Color page to create a subtle pulse. Set keyframes at the start and end with brightness at zero, bump it up in the middle, and you get a gentle breathing glow. Simple but effective. This works in the free version of Resolve.

For the second — a community theme called June — I overlay a ProRes 4444 smoke clip with an alpha channel on top of the static image using a composite overlay blend mode. The smoke drifts slowly across the image giving it a moody atmospheric feel. Dead simple, no keyframes needed.

Export as H.265 or AV1, point the motion wallpaper script at the file, and your desktop is alive.

TIPS

Go subtle. A gentle pulse or slow drift looks classy. A full anime battle scene behind your terminal windows will drive you mad in about ten minutes.

You can do much more complex work in Fusion — double-node setups with blurs and colour shifts — but even basic Color page effects produce great results.

THE THEMES

Huge credit to the Omarchy theme creators doing incredible work on the Discourse channel. Check out the themes channel there to see what people are building. This is just my way of adding a little motion to their art.

INSTALL

Script is on no-signal.uk under motion wallpapers. Curl command, terminal, done.

I make videos about Linux, Omarchy, DaVinci Resolve, creative tools, and gaming. Subscribe if that's your thing.