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Windows IT

Microsoft is Bringing Video Wallpapers To Windows 11 (windowscentral.com) 85

Posted by msmash from the who-asked-for-this dept.
Microsoft is working on bringing support for setting a video as your desktop wallpaper on Windows 11. From a report: Hidden in the latest Windows 11 preview builds, the feature lets you set an MP4, MOV, AVI, WMV, M4V, or MKV file as your wallpaper, which will play the video whenever you view the desktop.

For many years, users have wanted the ability to set a video as a desktop background. It's a feature that many Linux distributions support, and macOS also supports the ability to set a moving background as your lock screen. Windows Vista did support setting videos as your wallpaper, but only as part of the Ultimate SKU via a feature called DreamScene.

Microsoft is Bringing Video Wallpapers To Windows 11 More | Reply

Microsoft is Bringing Video Wallpapers To Windows 11

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  • Count me out (Score:5, Funny)

    by marcle ( 1575627 ) on Monday September 22, 2025 @01:33PM (#65676136)

    Let's just make the desktop as confusing and distracting as possible. What could go wrong?

    • If having video as wallpaper... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      ...is important to you, you really aren't doing anything important.

      • I dont know, I would like to have a an HTML page back as an option. Active Desktop was removed after Windows XP. I ran a simple web server which monitored my backup jobs for servers I administered, listed all services and hosts, some loading time statistics, and had links to view drill-down statistics. I also had some utilization graphs. Lastly, I had a security camera that took a picture every minute overlooking the view to the ocean (in San Diego where I was) that refreshed the image on a corner of my "da

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by znrt ( 2424692 )

          I ran a simple web server which monitored my backup jobs for servers I administered, listed all services and hosts, some loading time statistics, and had links to view drill-down statistics. I also had some utilization graphs. Lastly, I had a security camera that took a picture every minute overlooking the view to the ocean (in San Diego where I was) that refreshed the image on a corner of my "dashboard" wallpaper. It was so nice

          I wish they would bring a modern Active Desktop back.

          wish granted, no need to wait for active desktop. if you managed to do all that with html/js you will have no major problems writing your own app that stays at the bottom with a simple call to the windows api. give it a try.

        • Yeah there where interesting things you could do. I remember at work I had some Delphi app that monitored a bunch of servers that was embedded into a web page as an Active X control which in turn was embedded into the desktop. Ultimately thought it just made the desktop slower and clunkier.

          Also, at that point of time, grunge was still a thing.

          So if you ask me, I *dont* want the wallpapers back, it was a gauche silly idea. But I'd like Grunge back. There was some banging good tunes in those days.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mysidia ( 191772 )

          I dont know, I would like to have a an HTML page back as an option

          Microsoft just needs to add option of "pinning a Window to the background". To make the Window become fullscreen with no title bar, and prevent focus or interaction with the Window while it is pinned -- with your Desktop Icons and UI simply stacked on top of the Window, so your background could be any Window.

          if you want HTML, then you could pin a shortcut to open a dedicated chromeless full-screen browser app.

          This would be better than havin

      • Yup, it's yet another case of stuff no-one asked for and no-one wants. No doubt we'll have CoPilot suggesting desktop videos based on stuff pulled from Recall soon. I can't wait.

    • Re:Count me out (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Zocalo ( 252965 ) on Monday September 22, 2025 @01:52PM (#65676188) Homepage
      "Distracting" is probably the whole point. Look at the cool video, and not the UI disaster that is the rest of Windows 11. I guess you could also set it to a clip of Homer Simpson thinking of clowns when Marge is talking to him and switch to desktop to accurately mirror your state of mind in a typical Teams call? Can it play the audio too? $deity help the poor bastard that forgets to lock their screen when they leave their desk and falls victim to the very obvious office jape that this affords if so (HR are probably going to rolling up their sleeves and rubbing hands in glee when they hear about this).

      But really, WTF asked for this? Other than the kind of user that has all that garish dynamic aRGB lighting on their "rig" or Microsoft got trolled by 4Chan, I got nothin.

      • macOS has been doing this (using a video wallpaper) by default for a while, and I'm guessing that's what brought this idea to the fore (again).

        And yes, it's basically just a pointless, silly distraction - why would anyone want this? Unfortunately (from the OS manufacturers' position) operating systems are pretty feature complete, and basically the only "new shiny" thing they can offer is adding pointless bloat. Oh, also they can actively break things I guess... which always seems to go hand in hand with add

        • VLC has done it for a long time too. I tried it once, which was enough.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Chaset ( 552418 )

          IIRC, you can set any "screen saver" as a desktop background. I was doing this in the early days of OS X until the novelty wore off. One of the screen savers will display media including photos and videos, so I think that was how you could do it then. I captured a video of a mountain stream and tried to have that as a desktop. I think it worked, but at the time, the CPU load made the machine run hot and loud all the time, so it wasn't worth it.

          More interesting was the Marine Aquarium screen saver. Not

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Is that the same reason that Linux desktops did it?

        Phones, at least Android ones, have had this for years. Apparently people actually want it.

  • Active desktop returns (Score:5, Insightful)

    by xack ( 5304745 ) on Monday September 22, 2025 @01:34PM (#65676140)
    Microsoft officially out of ideas. And Windows 98 did it with 512 times less ram.

    • Re:Active desktop returns (Score:5, Insightful)

      by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Monday September 22, 2025 @01:47PM (#65676176) Journal

      It never really went away.. They just stopped talking about it, and they finally stopped trying to put long form articles and news bulls etc on the desktop. We generally kept the widget, and status content type stuff, from weather and headlines to e-mail.

      The problem with the desktop is a organizational space you visit briefly to switch or start tasks, and maybe move some files around. If it is actually displayed other than around the periphery for any amount of time it means the user isn't really 'using' the PC at all. They are idle. Now maybe they are an office worker sitting waiting for e-mail to arrive, but even then they'd rather be looking at an entertainment website of their choosing or just watching a video would a bunch of junk overlaid until something chimes or whatever.

      The 'Desktop' is really a bad spot for content. Either people don't see it, or they'd rather consume it in some other virtual space.

    • Programmers gotta program. At some point your UI has reached peak usability and the you can only go downhill.

    • This... was the worst part of the outcome of the anti-trust loss... Microsoft had to remove active desktop from the UI, and now 25 years later they are getting a shittier version back. In the day it was fun to throw dilbert on the bottom of the screen, random stock quotes down the side and slashdot on the other side. This would just show you things you would want to see on a daily basis and didn't take opening a window. You just embedded the browser rendering engine into a chunk of your desktop.

      Of course

  • Battery (Score:5, Funny)

    by Scutter ( 18425 ) on Monday September 22, 2025 @01:35PM (#65676142) Journal

    "My laptop battery only lasts like an hour. Can you order me a new laptop?"

        -Every helpdesk ticket from someone who enables this

    • Not sure, but if the frames were in video RAM already, isn't there graphics card magic that can trivially merge the frame with window data? I don't like it one bit, but we must be at the point where this is graphics card magic now.

      I hate every bit of it, if you want to watch a video, watch a video, there's little point in having a video for the desktop that's stealing precious attention.

      • Not sure, but if the frames were in video RAM already, isn't there graphics card magic that can trivially merge the frame with window data?

        Rendering from memory to the framebuffer is trivial. Decoding the video takes processing time, probably on the GPU these days. Otherwise you have to keep the whole uncompressed video in memory. For a short loop that might be viable, except that resolutions have been trending upwards over time, so the memory needed for that has been as well. Most non-gamers still have 16GB RAM or less so this is still an issue. It's smarter to do live backgrounds as animations using pixel shaders, then the power consumption

      • I am kind of worried about the implications of having a constant video in the background and recall(TM) capturing and analysing the screen every few seconds. Where is my Linux installation?
    • Reminds me of one commentary I read about battery life of a laptop. The reviewer mentioned that it was kind of strange that we got to a point where watching a 4K video is more efficient than browsing the web. Years ago, it was the other way around. It probably is due to all GPU, integrated or not, are more efficient with video now. It is a pity the CPUs cannot do the same with JavaScript.

  • eh (Score:2)

    by jonadab ( 583620 )
    Ok, so the specific formats are new, but Windows 98 supported animated wallpaper. No one actually wanted it or used it, but it was supported.
  • ... I have not seen my desktop background !

    • True. Loving XFCE and throwing a window a side of the monitor and it takes one side of the screen, throwing another at the other side and boom, two applications side-by-side and multitasking as it should be.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by caseih ( 160668 )

        Yeah mean like windows 1.0 did it? ;)

        • Windows 1 might have had tile and cascade, but you couldn't just grab the title bar and snap it on the side of the screen to half-fill it. It's not a ground changing feature, but it's convenient. There might be a win10 hotkey for it perhaps now?

      • Like basically every OS does at this point.

        I mean, I know that Windows will do that since Windows 7, macOS does that, Gnome does that. KDE does that.

        Not sure what your point is.

  • You keep saying that word ("wanted"). I don't (Score:3, Insightful)

    by flippy ( 62353 ) on Monday September 22, 2025 @01:41PM (#65676158) Homepage
    think it means what you think it means. "For many years, users have wanted the ability to set a video as a desktop background." Really? I've never heard anyone ask for that.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Alworx ( 885008 )

      Except advertisers....

      • So in fact they meant customers, not users. Well, now at least it makes sense from their point of view. Yay, the enshittification is coming to your own desktop today!

  • "to set a video as a desktop background" (Score:3)

    by oldgraybeard ( 2939809 ) on Monday September 22, 2025 @01:41PM (#65676162)
    really? who would want a desktop background in motion?

    • I guess all the people who have paid for Wallpaper Engine, for starters.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sconeu ( 64226 )

      Advertisers. And they'll include sound.

    • Web developers. You know, the ones that think fully animated backdrops genuinely "enhance the user experience."

      Sane people? Haha... no.

    • Because a serene scene of a lake with wind lightly blowing ripples across the surface can make an intense coding session less stressful when you stop for a moment. Babbling brooks are also quite nice.

      VLC has been able to do this on your Windows (and of course Linux) desktop for many years now.

  • Ive seen programs trying to do this going back to win95 and its not attractive, productive, or helpful.
  • Dont you have enough crap moving on your screen. I have NEVER in my life said, Hey I would like a video playing in the background of my windows apps.. WHO is asking for this?

    • WHO is asking for this?

      My kids would love this, and within 2 minutes there would be a skibi toilet video on each of their backgrounds, repeating infinitely.

  • I mean I used to run `xscreensaver -root` on Linux some 25 years ago as a novelty, but this is cool too.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by caseih ( 160668 )

      Wouldn't mind a real time x planet display of the earth with cloud map and Terminator. But that doesn't need to be a video and I can already to that with a cron job every hour or so which I do. Though love iss position might be cool. That said I haven't seen my background in months.

  • Why? (Score:3)

    by sarren1901 ( 5415506 ) on Monday September 22, 2025 @02:02PM (#65676222)

    I've never in my life wanted this. It sounds like a massive distraction and a waste of local resources. Just wait, once you can get video for your background, the very next fucking day you'll have ads on your background.

    I guess home Windows users deserve this for using Windows, since no way this will fly in the corporate setting.

  • Guess what's coming next? (Score:5, Informative)

    by devslash0 ( 4203435 ) on Monday September 22, 2025 @02:15PM (#65676252)

    Video ads in your desktop.

    • Before that my money is on malware that shows Furry porn, and threatens to switch it to Granny or Gay (both?) if you don't pay.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nadass ( 3963991 )
      The 1990s already had this innovation -- it was called PointCast, it was available in Screensaver and eventually windowed modes (or maybe I ran it inside a windowed VM, idk, it's been almost 3 decades), and it streamed both static and animated content (including video streams from broadcasters)... and, yes, as a consequence, ads.

      It's important to note that the ad-serving landscape in the 1990s was not as mature as the DoubleClick (now owned by Google) era of digital ad networks and real-time arbitrage wit

      • I liked the fish tank background. The only advertising there was for more fancy fish types.

      • PointCast... memory unlocked. There's a name I haven't heard in like 30 years.

        I agree with you that everything old is new again, often something that wasn't as successful as it could have been and companies are trying to make the idea work. VR has been in that category for almost 4 decades, and it still is.

  • If the video was dark and the changes were subtle, it could alleviate potential burn-in. However, burn-in seems to be pretty rare on newer OLED displays due to numerous technologies in the hardware.

  • Let go Old School (Score:3)

    by MrLint ( 519792 ) on Monday September 22, 2025 @02:20PM (#65676268) Journal

    Instead of 'video wall paper' can we just get the After Dark screensavers back into existence?

  • Every so often microsoft throws a bob at its customers. A animated desktop was tried before and it sucked. Like ole bob it didn't work and why would it work now?

  • Meanwhile... (Score:5, Informative)

    by xlsior ( 524145 ) on Monday September 22, 2025 @02:29PM (#65676292)
    ...Their rationale for only showing hours and minutes and hide the seconds of the digital clock in the system tray was to "save power" https://devblogs.microsoft.com... [microsoft.com]

    • Do they have a rationale for making the clock font smaller and harder to read on Windows 11? I can't read it without my glasses, and I got "upgraded" only about a week ago so aging isn't the cause.

      • They probably enjoy seeing you squint your eyes and moving closer to the screen, and figure that your eyeballs are worth more if they stick in an advert just then...

  • In related news, KeySplash announced their new vomit-proof keyboard! Pair it up with their PukeSurf mouse and you're good for hours of nauseating motion sickness and spreadsheets!

  • Next up, ADS as a desktop background (Score:4, Informative)

    by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 ) on Monday September 22, 2025 @02:34PM (#65676312) Homepage

    You know it's coming!

  • I hope this happens soon. I wouldn't mind a subtle video that protects against screen burn-in without being distracting or hiding my icons.

  • Who the F. looks at their desktop ? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dargaud ( 518470 ) <<ten.duagradg> <ta> <2todhsals>> on Monday September 22, 2025 @02:46PM (#65676348) Homepage
    Mine is black I think, I'm not even sure. Why ? Because I always have 10-20 windows on top of it and I *never* see it. When KDE opens, so do all my windows from the previous session, so I don't even see it on boot. What a stupid idea. Oh, it's Windows ?!? Okay, fine, sorry about that, carry on.

  • Apple added animated wallpapers a while back. I turned it off immediately. While Iâ(TM)m not one of those people who do everything full screen (why do people do that with a terminal on a large screen?!), my desktop is rarely visible, except for little bits of it around windows. Thatâ(TM)s enough though that if thereâ(TM)s any movement, itâ(TM)s distracting. I constantly felt like something was happening in one of my windows in my peripheral vision, making me look.

    What is it with Micr

  • Needs its coating of eye-candy.

  • What could go wrong?
  • I don't really know why, but I have seen people talk about it.

    I do see the potential for some decent pranks.

  • A terrible idea for anyone who wants to use their PC for anything productive.

    This is a feature that I'd never use, and I suspect that as soon as most people look at it and realize how annoying/distracting it is, they'll turn it off and never use it again too.

  • wondering when the guillotines are going to be dusted off
  • Why now? Why does anyone need video wallpapers--or does MS need an excuse to run the GPU all the time. Either way, it's a waste of power.

  • It’s not going to be long before people are selling hard core porn video wallpapers on OnlyFans and Patreon.

  • One can put porn movies on the computer-illiterate co-workers' screens.

    Hilarity and firings ensured.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ffkom ( 3519199 )
      Isn't that already covered by putting the browser on their carelessly unlocked screen into full-screen mode and then directing the browser to https://meatspin.com/ [meatspin.com] - one of the few web-sites that persisted since the 1990s?

  • I mean for a while Microsoft was pushing for the background image to be displayed via the browser... to further integrate the browser into the OS. Couldn't you just use the Real-player plugin or flash to have animated or video plugins back then?

  • Making windows even more insecure than it already is.
    I think when they add stuff like this to desktop operating systems they are running out of ideas.

  • > For many years, users have wanted the ability to set a video as a desktop background.

    Oct 2023: Set up animated wallpapers on Linux (Gnome/KDE) [medium.com]

    July 2020: Add videos as wallpaper on your Linux desktop [opensource.com]
  • We didn't want it 20 years ago and, if we did, VLC provided.
    Animated? OK - I have "Lively Wallpaper" using rain drop effect on my W11 and have had "Traces Lite" on my phones for years.
  • Holy crap I remember the first time i got the compiz desktop cube running in linux, that was a very long time ago (over 15 yrs). I also stopped using vids on the desktop less than a week later because as novel an idea as it might be, it was just too much activity, and very distracting.

  • Why? (Score:2)

    by BKX ( 5066 )

    Why would anyone want this? I literally stopped using my desktop after like Win98. I just put everything in the Start Menu. Now, with Windows 10/11 searchable Start Menus, I don't even need to keep the Start Menu shortcuts structured; I can just start typing the name of the program and hit Enter when it comes up. Actually seeing the Desktop would be very, very weird for me, since I'm usually running every program Maximized at almost all times. The only time I use unmaximized windows is when I want to drag s

  • Ok, now I definitely need to have win 11.

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