ElyWE - Animate Your Desktop Wallpaper

Overview

ElyWE (Elysia free and open-source wallpaper engine) is a lightweight Go application designed to animate your desktop wallpaper on Windows. By leveraging special code written by Gerald Degeneve, ElyWE can render a media player (MPV) behind the desktop.

Current features:

• Allows setting videos as live wallpapers
• Starts with Windows
• Convenient right-click menu
• Extremely lightweight

Usage

ElyWE [OPTIONS]

Options:
  -help                      Display help message
  -check                     Check if the MPV video player is installed correctly.
  -quit                      Kill all MPV processes.
  -set <filePath>            Set video file path.
  -install                   Install for right-click menu (Requires Admin).
  -uninstall                 Uninstall for right-click menu (Requires Admin).
  -enable_startup            Add shortcut to start with Windows.
  -disable_startup           Remove startup shortcut.

Requirements

• Windows 8 or higher
• MPV video player installed

If MPV is not installed, you will encounter the following error:

Error: Your system does not have a valid video player (MPV) installed.
Please install it using the following command:
$ choco install mpv
If you have never used Chocolatey or installed a package with Chocolatey,
please see the following guide: https://dev.to/stephanlamoureux/getting-started-with-chocolatey-epo

Video setup & testing

Video URL - Onedrive

Note

Due to the video being tested on a virtual machine, it may exhibit some choppiness and lag.

Warning

At the end of the video, I tested the application on VirusTotal, which resulted in two false positives. Whether to use or trust this application is entirely up to you.

Preparation: Install Chocolatey and MPV

Skip if you already have MPV installed.

Installing Chocolatey:

1. Open a new PowerShell window with admin rights.
2. Snippet from Chocolatey Documentation:

With PowerShell, there is an additional step. You must ensure Get-ExecutionPolicy is not Restricted. We suggest using Bypass to bypass the policy to get things installed or AllSigned for quite a bit more security.

• Run Get-ExecutionPolicy. If it returns Restricted, then run Set-ExecutionPolicy AllSigned or Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process.
• Now run the following command:

Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor 3072; iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://community.chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))

Installing MPV:

1. After installing Chocolatey, open a new PowerShell window with admin rights.
2. Run the following command:

choco install mpv

Installation

1. Download the latest release from the releases page and save it in a secure location.

Important

The version in the release is the 64-bit version.

2. Open CMD in the directory where the file is saved.

Basic Usage

To simply set a video as your wallpaper:

ElyWE --set "<video path>"

Advanced Usage

Right-Click Menu

To add a right-click menu option for video files:

ElyWE --install

After installing, you can right-click any video file and select "Set as desktop background".

Uninstall Right-Click Menu

To remove the right-click menu option:

ElyWE --uninstall

Startup with Windows

To enable ElyWE to start with Windows:

ElyWE --enable_startup

Disable Startup with Windows

To disable ElyWE from starting with Windows:

ElyWE --disable_startup

Stop video

ElyWE --quit

About anti-virus detection

Sometimes, ElyWE will be flagged as malware by several anti-virus programs (Avast, AVG, Norton, McAfee, Windows Defender, etc.), this, however, is a false positive.

3 things cause this to happen:

a) Because the program executable isn't signed

b) Some antiviruses detect this as a joke program

c) Writing to registry keys and starting up with Windows seems suspicious.

If downloaded from my GitHub, the program is safe to use (i cannot give this promise if you download it from somewhere else!). It is okay if you do not trust me; you can always go ahead and compile it yourself.

For a tutorial on how to exclude this program from your antivirus so it can run anyway, check out these links:

Windows Defender: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/add-an-exclusion-to-windows-security-811816c0-4dfd-af4a-47e4-c301afe13b26
Avast: https://support.avast.com/en-ww/article/Antivirus-scan-exclusions#pc
AVG: https://support.avg.com/SupportArticleView?l=en&urlName=avg-antivirus-scan-exclusion
Norton: https://support.norton.com/sp/en/us/home/current/solutions/v3672136
McAfee: https://www.mcafee.com/support/?page=shell&shell=article-view&articleId=TS102056
For other antiviruses, try searching for "<antivirus name> add exception"

Disclaimer

Please note: This software is intended for demo purposes, not for productive use. As such, it is not polished, well-written, configurable, or in any way convenient to use. Do whatever you want with it, at your own risk.

Acknowledgements

• Special thanks to Gerald Degeneve for his code.

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Note: Used ChatGPT for some code snippets as well as this README.

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Feel free to create an issue if you encounter any problems or have suggestions for improvements. Happy animating!