Hyprpaper is a blazing fast wallpaper utility for Hyprland with the ability to dynamically change wallpapers through sockets. It will work on all wlroots-based compositors, though.

AUR: yay -S hyprpaper-git

git clone https://github.com/hyprwm/hyprpaper
cd hyprpaper
make all

the output binary will be in ./build/, copy it to your PATH, e.g. /usr/bin

Hyprpaper is controlled by the config, like this:

~/.config/hypr/hyprpaper.conf

preload = /path/to/image.png

# .. more preloads

wallpaper = monitor,/path/to/image.png

# .. more monitors

Preload will tell Hyprland to load a particular image (supported formats: png, jpg, jpeg). Wallpaper will apply the wallpaper to the selected output (monitor is the monitor's name, easily can be retrieved with hyprctl monitors)

You may add contain: before the file path in wallpaper= to set the mode to contain instead of cover:

wallpaper = monitor,contain:/path/to/image.jpg

A Wallpaper cannot be applied without preloading. The config is not reloaded dynamically.

Preload does exactly what it says. It loads the entire wallpaper into memory. This can result in around 8 - 20MB of mem usage. It is not recommended to preload every wallpaper you have, as it will be a) taking a couple seconds at the beginning to load and b) take 100s of MBs of disk and RAM usage.

Preload is meant only for situations in which you want a wallpaper to switch INSTANTLY when you issue a wallpaper keyword (e.g. wallpaper per workspace)

In any and all cases when you don't mind waiting 300ms for the wallpaper to change, consider making a script that:

• preloads the new wallpaper
• sets the new wallpaper
• unloads the old wallpaper (to free memory)

You can use hyprctl hyprpaper (if on Hyprland) to issue a keyword, for example

hyprctl hyprpaper wallpaper DP-1,~/Pictures/myepicpng.png

Since the IPC has to tick every now and then, and poll in the background, battery life might be a tiny bit worse with IPC on. If you want to fully disable it, use

ipc = off

in the config.

If you use a lot of wallpapers, consider unloading those that you no longer need. This will mean you need to load them again if you wish to use them for a second time, but will free the memory used by the preloaded bitmap. (Usually 8 - 20MB, depending on the resolution)

You can issue a hyprctl hyprpaper unload [PATH] to do that.

For other compositors, the socket works like socket1 of Hyprland, and is located in /tmp/hypr/.hyprpaper.sock (this path only when Hyprland is not running!)