Windows 10 Spotlight Background images for Gnome

• /usr/bin/spotlight.sh
• /usr/lib/systemd/user/spotlight.service
• /usr/lib/systemd/user/spotlight.timer
• /usr/share/applications/spotlight.desktop

• ~/.local/bin/spotlight.sh
• ~/.local/share/systemd/user/spotlight.service
• ~/.local/share/systemd/user/spotlight.timer
• ~/.local/share/applications/spotlight.desktop

• wget
• jq
• sed
• glib2 (gnome)
• systemd

Run systemctl --user enable spotlight.timer to get a new picture every day.

To fetch a new background manually you can either use the desktop entry by looking for spotlight in your gnome application menu ([SUPER] spot... [ENTER]) or trigger the service from command line with systemctl --user start spotlight.service.

Use the system log to get the past image descriptions, e.g. for the the current background journalctl -t spotlight -n 1.

Spotlight does not require particular configuration.

The default behavior of spotlight is to discard the previous image when it fetches a new one. This behavior can be alter from the command line:

• -h shows a help message
• -k keeps the previous image
• -d stores the image into the given destination. Defaults to "$HOME/.local/share/backgrounds".

In order to modify the behavior of the service systemctl edit --user spotlight.service can be used to overwrite the program invocation:

[Service]
ExecStart=
ExecStart=/usr/bin/env bash spotlight.sh -k -d %h/Pictures/Spotlight

Notifications can be controlled via the Gnome Control Center.

aur/spotlight