It’s late at night, and you’re avoiding work that was supposed to be done yesterday. You could open an application on your desktop to keep your attention, or what about the desktop itself? [Underpig1] has you covered with Octos. Octos is an open-source application created to allow interactive wallpapers based on HTML, CSS, or JS for Windows 10 and 11.
There are many wallpaper applications made to spruce up your desktop, but Octos stands out to us here at Hackaday from the nature of being open source. What comes along with the project is a detailed API to reference when creating your own wallpaper. Additionally, this allows for detailed and efficient visualization techniques that would otherwise be difficult to display, perfect for procrastination.
Included demos range from an interactive solar system to Conway’s Game of Life. Customization options allow for basic manipulation of the backdrops in the application itself, but we’re sure you could allow for some fun options with enough tinkering.
If you want to try Octos out for yourself, it’s incredibly easy. Octos can be found on the Microsoft Store, and additional backdrops can be added within the application. Open-source applications allow for incredibly easy additions to your personal device, but it’s not always that way. Kindle has been a prime example of a fairly locked down system; however, that never stops a clever hacker!
Thanks to [Joshua Throm] for the tip!
I think https://github.com/rocksdanister/lively is nicer, and also open-source
More options is always a good thing
I wanted this for so long
Active Desktop had been included since Windows 98. ;)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Desktop
Back then the usual suspects complained that Active Desktop was another Microsoft ploy to force IE4 onto the users, and then it was poo-pooed with all sorts of excuses and the whole concept of displaying web content on the desktop was derided as a gimmick.
But now that it’s open source, it’s new and efficient and exciting again.
Ha. I was going to mention this, but you beat me to it.
The true active desktop was discontinued after the release of 32-bit XP, though. Later versions of windows got Gadgets and live tiles, but nothing quite the same.
I remember playing around with the “preview release” (which ran on windows ’95) and deciding it was too resource intensive to be anything but a gimmick.
Still seems like a gimmick, but at least modern computers can probably render a large .gif on the desktop without choking and dying because it comes with a transparent background..
There is also “Wallpaper Engine”. I’ve played with it a few years ago. It could do cool things, but it also always kept my GPU and system from going into powersaving mode or low power idle mode. the fan was always on. power consumption of the whole was noticeably elevated. like keeping a game engine constantly running in the background, which is basically what it did. i wonder if these tools have the same downside.