Hey everyone! I wanted to share a cool way to spice up your Mac’s desktop with custom dynamic wallpapers. These wallpapers change throughout the day, reflecting the time or other cool stuff. macOS has some built-in, but making your own? That’s next level! I’m using the Equinox app; it’s super easy to personalize your Mac.
Using Equinox to create dynamic wallpapers
Equinox is a free app on the Mac App Store. It’s designed to make creating these wallpapers simple and fun.
Equinox gives you three main ways to create dynamic wallpapers:
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Solar wallpapers: These are awesome! They change based on the sun’s position, so they’re always in sync with the real world. You can set them up to match the sun’s position at your location or use the location and time the photos were taken.
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Time wallpapers: These let you pick specific times for each wallpaper to show up.
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Appearance wallpapers: These switch between a light and a dark image when your system changes modes.
Before we jump in, you’ll need your own images. Equinox doesn’t come with any pre-made wallpapers. You’ll need two images for Appearance wallpapers. For Solar and Time wallpapers, use as many as you want to represent the changes.
Grab images from the internet (ideally, the same location at different times) or generate them using AI. There are plenty of AI tools, such as DALL-E 3 in ChatGPT, Midjourney, Microsoft’s Copilot, or Meta’s AI Image Generator.
Make sure your images are in PNG, JPEG, TIFF, or HEIF format.
Okay, here’s how to do it with Equinox:
- First, you need to have some dynamic wallpaper active. Go to System Settings and then ‘Wallpaper’.
- Pick any dynamic wallpaper and ensure ‘Dynamic’ is selected.
- Open Equinox. Pick the type of wallpaper. I’m going to show you how to make a ‘Solar’ wallpaper. Double-click ‘Solar’.
- Click ‘Browse’ and select your images, or just drag and drop them in.
- Here’s the tricky part: you need the Altitude and Azimuth values for each photo. This tells Equinox when to show each image. The app has a Sun Calculator. Ideally, use the values for the time and place where the photo was taken, or use your current location.
Click ‘Calculator’ to open the Sun Calculator.
- In the Sun Calculator, set the location, date, and time to match when and where the photo was taken. You can type in the address or use the map, set the date, and use the timeline.
- The Altitude and Azimuth values will update. Drag and drop these values under the right photo in Equinox. Do this for each image.
- Once you’ve added the Altitude and Azimuth values to all images, click ‘Create’.
- You’ll see ‘Save’, ‘Set’, and ‘Share’. Click ‘Set’ to use the wallpaper right away.
- To save the wallpaper file, click ‘Save’. Now you’ve got your custom dynamic wallpaper!
- To make a ‘Time’ wallpaper, select ‘Time’ in the app. Add your images, and enter the time for each one to show up.
- For ‘Appearance’ wallpapers, select ‘Appearance’ from the main menu, pick two images. They’ll switch when you change between light and dark modes.
Other ways to create dynamic wallpapers
Using Dynaper for dynamic wallpapers
Another option for making dynamic wallpapers that shift with time or appearance is Dynaper. It’s a bit more complicated, but it has extra features like auto-detecting the time in photos, support for more image types, and a metadata viewer. I had some issues with the Solar Wizard, which is why I focused on Equinox first.
Now you can create all the dynamic wallpapers you want!