Video wallpapers for your Mac.
Lively is a small menu bar app. It plays looping video behind your desktop icons. Each display and each Space can have its own clip. No Dock icon. No account. No cloud.
- Download the latest DMG or zip from Releases.
- Drag Lively.app into Applications.
- Open Lively. Look for it in the menu bar (top right).
Lively is signed for local use, not notarized by Apple. After install, run once:
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Lively.appOr right-click Lively.app → Open → confirm.
brew tap harshabala/lively https://github.com/harshabala/Lively
brew install --cask lively- Click the menu bar icon.
- On Displays, pick a display card.
- Drop an MP4, MOV, or M4V on the zone (or click to browse).
- Only H.264 and HEVC work. Other codecs are rejected with a clear error.
- Wallpaper — one video for that Space
- Light & Dark — different videos for light and dark appearance
Save videos once. Apply them to one display or all displays.
- Launch at login
- Pause on battery
- Playback quality and loop
- Appearance (light / dark / system)
- Reset data
- Logs and About (includes first-launch help)
Pause and resume all wallpapers from the top of the window.
| Platform | macOS 14+ |
| Stack | Native Swift. No third-party libraries. |
| Privacy | Offline by default. Optional GitHub update check only if you turn it on. |
| License | MIT |
- Codecs: H.264 and HEVC only
- Files:
.mp4,.mov,.m4v - Not App Store: needs desktop-layer access the sandbox does not allow
- Not notarized: clear quarantine once after download (see Install)
- No playlists or schedules yet
- Updates: banner can open Releases; no auto-install
./package.sh
open /private/tmp/LivelyOutput/Lively.appDMG with drag-to-Applications:
./scripts/make-dmg.shNeeds Xcode or Command Line Tools.
Assignments stay on your Mac. Security-scoped bookmarks remember the files you chose. No analytics. No network entitlement for core use. Optional update check only talks to GitHub Releases when enabled.
MIT. See LICENSE.