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DWALL

A Windows dynamic-wallpaper app that follows the sun's position, not a clock: it computes solar altitude and azimuth locally and applies the theme frame that matches, moving the system light/dark theme and the lock screen with it (the theme switch is on by default and can be turned off). The always-on part is a single-threaded Rust daemon that holds 3–8 MB of private memory — the executable itself is 0.63 MB — and the settings window is a separate process that only runs while it is open.

How it compares

	DWALL	WinDynamicDesktop	Auto Dark Mode
Frame chosen by	Solar altitude/azimuth match	Day/night and sunrise/sunset times	— (theme switching)
System light/dark theme	Switched, by solar position	Not switched	Switched — its core feature
Lock screen	Yes	Yes	Not documented
Per-monitor themes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Scripting / automation	None	PowerShell scripts, CLI	Scripts, conditions, hotkeys
Always-on cost	3–8 MB daemon, no tray icon	Not documented; ~70 MB app with tray icon	Not documented; tray icon
Architectures / languages	x64 / 6	x86, x64, ARM64 / ~55 offered	x64, ARM64 / 31
Distribution	GitHub releases	GitHub, Microsoft Store, winget, Scoop, Chocolatey	GitHub, Microsoft Store, winget
Licence	AGPL-3.0-only	MPL-2.0	GPL-3.0

Each fact above is sourced from the other project's own material; the full matrix and the cases where they are the better choice are in docs/.

Features

• Solar scheduling — frames are matched to the sun's position; the 15-theme catalogue uses 5 to 24 frames per theme.
• System theme with it — light/dark is switched on the same calculation (on by default; the switch is in the settings page).
• Lock screen — optionally mirrors the wallpaper's theme and frame.
• Per-monitor themes — a different theme per display, reapplied when monitors change.
• Daily random theme — optionally draw one theme per day from a pool you choose.
• Adjustable cadence — evaluate every 1 s to 1 h (default 15 s).
• Your own themes — a directory with theme.toml and images; see docs/custom-themes.md.
• Headless mode — the same binary runs from a config file, with a CLI; see docs/headless.md.
• Restricted networks — mirror templates and SOCKS5 for theme downloads.
• Six languages, no telemetry — English, Simplified/Traditional/Hong Kong Chinese, Japanese, Korean.

Requirements

64-bit Windows 10 or 11. The settings window needs the WebView2 runtime (present on current Windows; the installer covers it); the daemon needs neither WebView2 nor administrator rights. Heavily trimmed Windows images are not supported.

Install

1. Download the installer (Dwall.Settings_<version>_x64-setup.exe) from the latest release and run it — it installs per user, so no administrator rights are required.
2. Daemon only, or a managed/headless machine: take Dwall_<version>_x64-daemon.zip instead and follow docs/headless.md.

winget and Scoop manifests are prepared but not submitted to those repositories yet.

Usage

1. Run DWALL and allow location access, or set coordinates manually in the settings page.
2. Pick a theme in the sidebar. Themes that are not downloaded yet show a Download button and cannot be picked until it finishes; once downloaded, Apply uses it.
3. With several monitors, select the display in the monitor selector and repeat step 2 for each one.
4. Optionally enable the lock-screen wallpaper.
5. DWALL keeps running in the background — there is no tray icon; the settings window is started again from the Start menu.

Screenshots

Logs

Level is info; set DWALL_LOG (a plain level such as debug, or dwall=debug) to change it. Release builds are compiled without the debug/trace statements, so only info, warn and error can appear there. The daemon writes to %LOCALAPPDATA%\com.thep0y.dwall\log\dwall.log and rotates the previous file into backup\ on each start; the settings window opens the folder for you.

Frequently asked questions

Why are the settings window and the daemon separate processes? They started as one process with a tray icon, and the aim is a background cost of a few megabytes, so the GUI toolkit, webview and HTTP client were moved into a window that exists only while it is open. The trade-off is no IPC: the two share config.toml, and the window polls the daemon's state instead of being notified. The same reasoning is why there is no tray icon — a tray process costs more than the daemon it would control.

Theme downloads fail. Wallpaper sets are hosted on GitHub, which some networks cannot reach. Set a mirror template in the settings page, for example https://ghproxy.cc/https://github.com/<owner>/<repo>/releases/download/<version>/<asset> for a prefixing proxy, or https://kkgithub.com/<owner>/<repo>/... for a mirror that replaces the host. Thumbnails come from the same host and need the same setting.

The window used the network when I opened it. It checks for a new version once per start — through the mirror and proxy configured in the settings — and tells you if there is one. A check that cannot reach GitHub stays silent rather than showing a failure you did not ask for, and nothing is downloaded or installed until you press the button in the About section.

Can I use my own wallpapers? Yes — a custom theme is a directory containing a theme.toml manifest (schema 1) plus its images. See docs/custom-themes.md. The curated sets remain the easiest option, since their frames are already aligned with the sun's path.

Can I contribute a wallpaper set? Open an issue describing the concept (and where the images can be fetched); suitable sets can be added to the curated catalogue.

Contributing and licence

Issues and pull requests are welcome. DWALL is licensed under AGPL-3.0-only; the source is in crates/ (Rust) and src/ (frontend), with AGENTS.md describing the layout and conventions.