Animated GIFs as Desktop Background

niusnius
Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
Hi there,



Is it possible to display an animated gif as a desktop wallpaper, or even as a screen saver?



In truth, I would like to have the Batman logo swinging on my iBook when the machine is idle, or as a wallpaper.



Has anyone tried this before?



Regards,

Nius.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 9
    ebbyebby Posts: 3,110member
    That would take a tremendous amount of CPU power. I don't think that is an option. I've used a screen-saver as a background for my Dual G5, but wouldn't do that on anything less.
  • Reply 2 of 9
    curiousuburbcuriousuburb Posts: 3,325member
    There are some 'movie as desktop' tools on versiontracker...
  • Reply 3 of 9
    niusnius Posts: 58member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by curiousuburb

    There are some 'movie as desktop' tools on versiontracker...



    Thanks to both of you.

    Nius.
  • Reply 4 of 9
    murkmurk Posts: 935member
    You could use Konfabulator. Don't know if there is a widget to actually show just any gif. I played around with the globe widget to use a smaller spinning globe, and atom gif I found online, or a spinning iPod. One or the other of these was superimposed inside a crystal Apple logo in the middle of my desktop for a while. It was cool, but, like Konfabulator itself, really wasn't worth the overhead.
  • Reply 5 of 9
    danielctulldanielctull Posts: 586member
    in System Preferences there is a option to change the picture every 5 seconds, you could get the frames individually and set them all in a folder. However 5 seconds might be too slow...
  • Reply 6 of 9
    hirohiro Posts: 2,663member
    You can put it in a screensaver and then run the saver as the desktop. That takes a little programming knowledge, but not too much with the number of screensaver examples in the wild. Backlight is the app that runs any screensaver as the desktop.
  • Reply 7 of 9
    niusnius Posts: 58member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Hiro

    You can put it in a screensaver and then run the saver as the desktop. That takes a little programming knowledge, but not too much with the number of screensaver examples in the wild. Backlight is the app that runs any screensaver as the desktop.



    Fantastic. Thanks for letting me know. I am a programmer, so I should be able to sort it out
  • Reply 8 of 9
    placeboplacebo Posts: 5,767member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Ebby

    That would take a tremendous amount of CPU power. I don't think that is an option. I've used a screen-saver as a background for my Dual G5, but wouldn't do that on anything less.



    The Flurry screensaver takes two to three percent of an average G4's CPU.
  • Reply 9 of 9
    webmailwebmail Posts: 639member
    It doesn't take a tremedous amount of CPU, maybe on a lowpowered g4. Works great on my dell ;-)



    There was something called overlay...webkit something that let you have a webpage transparent over your desktop. Use that...



    Search versiontracker.com for desktop webpage...
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