Gnome-shell: Automatic Wallpaper Change

Introduction

I couldn't find a native function to regularly change wallpapers in Gnome-shell. That's why I took inspiration from a small script and improved it.

Implementation

All my wallpapers are in ~/Images. We'll create a small script, which I put in /usr/bin but you can put it wherever you want:

(/usr/bin/wallpaper-changer)

 1
 2
 3
 4
 5
 6
 7
 8
 9
10
11
12
13
14
15

#!/bin/bash
IMAGES_FOLDER='/home/pmavro/Images'
RANDOM_EVERY=1800

cd $IMAGES_FOLDER
while [ 1 ] ; do
  random_num=`ls $IMAGES_FOLDER | sort -R | tail -n 1`
  # Gnome shell usage
  # gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background picture-uri "file:$IMAGES_FOLDER/$random_num"
  # Nitrogen usage
  /usr/bin/nitrogen --set-scaled $IMAGES_FOLDER/$random_num
  # XFCE
  xfconf-query -c xfce4-desktop -p /backdrop/screen0/monitor0/image-path -s $IMAGES_FOLDER/$random_num
  sleep $RANDOM_EVERY
done

Uncomment one of the 3 lines between Gnome Shell, XFCE or Nitrogen to choose the desired method.

Let's set the execution rights:

1

chmod 755 /usr/bin/wallpaper-changer

Then add an autostart to your session:

(~/.config/autostart/wallpaper.desktop)

1
2
3
4
5
6
7

[Desktop Entry]
Name=wallpaper-changer
Exec=/usr/bin/wallpaper-changer
Comment=change wallpaper every so often
Hidden=false
Type=Application
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true

Restart your session and you're done :-)

Nitrogen

If you have multiple screens, you might want to have properly placed dual-screen wallpapers. For this, we'll use the nitrogen utility:

1

aptitude install nitrogen

Then, you must disable desktop icons if you want to use Nitrogen:

1

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background show-desktop-icons false

References

http://superuser.com/questions/298050/periodically-changing-wallpaper-under-gnome-3