aura

A simple, lightweight, wallpaper manager written in Rust.

Includes an optional shader mode, which engages a GPU-accelerated shader renderer, that renders live shaders as your desktop wallpaper (this mode consumes more RAM, ~80-120MB, but is a lot of fun!).

💾 Install | ⚡ Features | 📝 Config

shader-gradient_glossy.mp4

💾 Install

➡️ Manually download the latest release here, or use the installer for your platform.

➡️ macOS

First launch may need approval in System Settings → Privacy & Security

brew install --cask hmerritt/tap/aura

➡️ Linux

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hmerritt/aura/master/install.sh | sh

➡️ Windows via Scoop

scoop bucket add hmerritt https://github.com/hmerritt/scoop-bucket
scoop install hmerritt/aura

⚡ Features

• Small in size, low memory footprint (~3MB when in image mode)
• Multiple image sources can be added
  • Single image path
  • Directory path
  • RSS feed
• Caches remote images locally for faster switching
• Automatically re-encodes images for wider format support: jpeg | png | bmp | gif | webp
• Tray icon to trigger a new image quickly
• Built-in self-updater on Windows/Linux; Homebrew-managed updates on macOS
• Shader mode which engages a GPU-accelerated shader renderer (Metal on macOS), allowing for live animated wallpapers

📝 Config

Example aura.hcl config file

Default location is ~/.config/aura.hcl

# Runtime renderer mode: "image" | "shader"
renderer = "image"

# Image mode options (used when renderer = "image")
image = {
  # Image sources. Multiple sources will be combined together to pick the next wallpaper from.
  # Supported source types: "file" | "directory" | "rss"
  sources = [
    { type = "file", path = "C:/wallpapers/favorite.jpg" },
    { type = "directory", path = "C:/wallpapers/library", recursive = true, extensions = ["jpg", "png", "webp"] },
    { type = "rss", url = "https://example.com/feed.xml", max_items = 100 }
  ]
  timer = "3h"                     # "40s" | "12m" | "3h"
  remoteUpdateTimer = "2h"         # "40s" | "12m" | "3h"
  format = "jpg"                   # "jpg" | "png"
  jpeg_quality = 90                # 1-100
}

# Shader mode options (used when renderer = "shader")
shader = {
  name = "gradient_glossy"         # "gradient_glossy" | "limestone_cave" | "dither_asci_1" | "dither_asci_2" | "dither_warp" | "silk"
  target_fps = 60                  # 1-999
  resolution = 100                 # 1-100 (% internal shader render resolution; output stays full-screen)
  mouse_enabled = false            # false | true
  desktop_scope = "virtual"        # "virtual" | "primary"
  color_space = "unorm"            # "unorm" | "srgb"
}

# App update settings
updater = {
  enabled = true
  checkInterval = "6h"
  feedUrl = "https://github.com/hmerritt/aura/releases/latest/download"
}

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