On a laptop, using more computing power also means a shorter battery life. Using one that features many simple or a few complex animations can require a lot of computing power, and leave fewer resources available for you to smoothly use your computer for other tasks such as browsing the internet. An animated wallpaper is always active, even when it is not visible on the screen.

While animated wallpaper can be a fun way to personalize your computer, it has a notable disadvantage over using static wallpaper and/or screensavers. You may need to invest some time into setting up such a program and keeping it up to date.Īpple's App Store and the Windows Store may both also include various (often commercial) applications that can replace the static desktop background on your computer. As such, a third-party software program, likes DeskScapes for Windows or NerdTools for OS X, needs to be installed before you can place animated wallpaper on your desktop. Modern versions of the Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac OS X operating systems do not support animated wallpaper out of the box. Whereas 'regular' wallpaper is a static image, an animated wallpaper can feature animated elements.ĭue to its lively nature, animated wallpaper is sometimes also referred to as live wallpaper. The only difference with desktop wallpaper is that an animated wallpaper, as the name implies, is animated, much like an animated screensaver but, unlike screensavers, keeping the user interface of the operating system available at all times.

Windows animated wallpaper