ScrobbleWallScrobbleWall vs Lively Wallpaper: one plays, the other draws
These two get compared a lot and they are not really competitors. This page is written by the people who make ScrobbleWall, so read it with that in mind — but the recommendation at the bottom genuinely sends some people to Lively.
The distinction that settles most of it
Lively Wallpaper is a player. You hand it a video, a GIF, a web page, a Shadertoy URL or a Unity build, and it renders that on your desktop. It is free, open source under GPL-v3, Windows-only, and very good at what it does. What it does not do is produce content: on its own, Lively has nothing to show you.
ScrobbleWall is a generator. It reads your Last.fm listening history and draws wallpapers out of it — collages, word clouds, a listening clock, the album playing right now — at your screen's resolution, and sets them on a rotation. Since version 1.4 it also animates the background it drew.
So "which is better" is like asking whether a media player is better than a camera. The real question is what you want on your screen.
The setup people usually get recommended
Ask anywhere for a Last.fm wallpaper and the answer is often: install Lively, then point it at waves.fm — a web page that draws animated waves for whatever you are playing on Last.fm right now. It looks good and it is a genuinely clever thing.
Worth knowing before you commit to it:
- It only knows this second. waves.fm renders the currently playing track. It has no history in it — no collage of your last six months, no listening clock, nothing about the album you played to death in 2019.
- Nothing shows when nothing plays. Close the music and the wallpaper has no subject.
- Two dependencies, one of them not yours. A wallpaper engine plus a third-party website. If the site goes down or changes, your desktop goes with it.
- A browser is running your wallpaper. Lively renders web wallpapers in an embedded browser, which is a heavier thing to keep alive than a static image or a short video loop.
None of that makes it a bad choice. If what you want is a live now-playing visual and nothing else, it is a reasonable way to get one.
Side by side
| ScrobbleWall | Lively + waves.fm | |
|---|---|---|
| Setup | One app. Type a username. | Two pieces of software plus a URL. |
| Currently playing | Yes, interrupts the rotation with the cover. | Yes, that is its whole purpose. |
| Listening history | 12 wallpaper types, any period from a week to all time. | None. |
| When no music is playing | Rotates through your history. | Nothing to show. |
| Animated background | Yes — eight built-in loops, or your own video. | Yes, and far more variety of sources. |
| Any wallpaper you like | No. It draws its own. | Yes — video, GIF, web, shaders, Unity. |
| Per-monitor | A different wallpaper on each screen. | Yes. |
| Price | Free. No ads, no telemetry. | Free. Lively is GPL-v3 open source. |
| Open source | No. | Yes. |
| Languages | Interface and wallpaper text in 21. | Depends on each piece. |
Facts about Lively are taken from its own documentation. If something here is out of date, write to us and it gets fixed.
About the animated background
Until version 1.4, movement was the one clear advantage of the Lively route. It is not any more, though ScrobbleWall's version is deliberately narrower: the background moves and the album covers do not. The clip does not paint over your wallpaper's colours either: the blurred album art stays underneath it.
Each wallpaper is kept as two layers, so the engine animates the gradient underneath while the covers, the titles and the clock stay pinned and sharp. You can use one of eight loops that ship with the app — aurora, water, waves, smoke, lights, falling lights, snow and whirl — or any video of yours. It stops drawing entirely when a game or a video is fullscreen, when the session is locked, or when a window covers the desktop. More about how that works.
Lively will still beat it on range. Shadertoy, interactive wallpapers, audio-reactive scenes and a large community library are not things ScrobbleWall has or is trying to build.
So which one
Pick Lively Wallpaper if…
you want animated wallpapers in general and your music is only part of it; you want to use a specific video, shader or interactive scene; you care that it is open source; or a live now-playing display is the whole of what you are after.
Pick ScrobbleWall if…
you want your listening history on screen and you do not want to assemble it; you want it to keep changing without you doing anything; you want it to still show something when the music is off; or you are on a computer where you cannot install software, in which case the portable build is the only one of the two options that will run.
Running both is not a good idea: they each take over the desktop, so whichever starts last wins and the other's work is invisible.
Questions
Does Lively have Last.fm support built in?
No. It exposes an API that lets developers build interactive wallpapers which can read things like audio levels and music metadata, but Lively itself ships no Last.fm feature. Anything Last.fm-shaped you see running in Lively is somebody else's web page or wallpaper.
Can ScrobbleWall's wallpapers be used inside Lively?
The images it generates are ordinary JPEGs in your Pictures folder, so nothing stops you pointing another tool at that folder. But the point of the app is that it sets and rotates them itself, so there is little to gain.
How much does the animated background cost in CPU?
Usage depends on your PC, screens, playback speed and video resolution. Video decoding and drawing pause when the desktop is covered; lightweight checks continue so playback can resume. See the measurements and explanation.
Why isn't ScrobbleWall open source?
It is a one-person project that is free but not open. That is a fair reason to prefer Lively if it matters to you, and we would rather say so than dodge the question.