Variety
Open-source Linux wallpaper manager that downloads and rotates wallpapers from online sources.
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About Variety
Variety is a long-standing wallpaper manager for Linux. It changes your desktop background on a schedule, using your own image folders or wallpapers downloaded automatically from sources such as Wallhaven, Unsplash, Bing and Reddit, and gives you quick ways to favourite good images and trash bad ones. It can also overlay quotations or a clock on the wallpaper, apply image filters, and sits in the system tray for pausing and skipping. It works out of the box on most desktop environments and can be set up on tiling window managers through tools like feh. It is free and GPL-licensed, packaged in the repositories of Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch and other distributions. It shows still images only, not animated or video wallpapers, and the project is now in maintenance mode, so new features are unlikely.
Best for: Linux users who want a fresh still wallpaper on a schedule from online sources.
Pros and cons
What works
- Pulls wallpapers from many online sources automatically
- Works on most Linux desktops and window managers
- In major distribution repositories
- Free and open source
Why people leave
- Still images only, no animated or video wallpapers
- In maintenance mode, with little new development
Top Variety alternatives
See all 3- 1
Hidamari66.5Moves from rotating still images to looping video or web page wallpapers on Linux.
- 2
Wallpaper Engine62.6Animated wallpapers with playlists and a huge Workshop library, on Windows.
- 3
Lively Wallpaper59.6Free animated and video wallpapers if you're on Windows.
Why people left Variety
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Variety: common questions
Is Variety free?
Yes. Variety is free, open-source software.
Is Variety open source?
Yes. The source code is on GitHub at varietywalls/variety.
What platforms does Variety run on?
Variety is available for Linux.
What are the best alternatives to Variety?
The highest-ranked Variety alternatives right now are Hidamari, Wallpaper Engine and Lively Wallpaper. See the full ranked list for pricing, platforms and verified facts.