If you don’t want to look at the same old boring default wallpaper day in and day out, you can change the desktop background to an image or photo of your choice. You can even set up a wallpaper slideshow with all your favorite images. By default, you can set any .jpg, .png, or .bmp images as a desktop background on Windows 11 and 10. However, what if you want to spice up your desktop with an animated GIF wallpaper? Well, while Windows desktop customization doesn’t natively support it, you can set a GIF desktop background with just a couple of clicks.
In this quick and easy Windows tutorial, I will show a simple and quick way you can use a GIF image as a wallpaper on Windows. Let’s get started.
Set GIF desktop background on Windows
To set a GIF wallpaper as the desktop background follow the below-provided steps.
Step 1: Go to the Lively GitHub page using the link below.
GitHub link: https://github.com/rocksdanister/lively/releases
Step 2: Scroll down the GitHub page and click on the “lively_setup_x86_full_vx.exe” link under the Assets section.
Step 3: The above action will download the Lively software to your computer. It will be saved to the Downloads folder.
Step 4: Find and double-click on the downloaded exe file.
Step 5: Select the “Install for me only (recommended)” option.
Note: If you have multiple users and want them to have access to this application, select the “Install for all users” option.
Step 6: Follow on-screen instructions to complete the installation process.
Note: When you see the “Select additional tasks” screen, ensure the “Automatically start Lively wallpaper” checkbox is selected.
Step 7: After installing the application, open it. You can double-click on the desktop icon or search for “Lively” in the Start menu.
Step 8: Click on the Add Wallpaper option at the top of the window.
Step 9: Click on the Open button.
Step 10: Go to the folder where the GIF wallpaper is saved, select it, and click Open.
Step 11: Set the title of the wallpaper and press the OK button.
Step 12: The GIF wallpaper is added to the Lively Wallpaper app and is set as the desktop background.
That is it. With that, you are done setting up the GIF background on Windows. I set the GIF wallpaper on my Windows 11 system and it works like a treat.
Wrapping up
Do keep in mind that if you are on a laptop, the GIF wallpaper can increase battery consumption and reduce the backup life. So, be aware. The app has a lot of settings to fine-tune the behavior. For example, you can remove GIF wallpaper when on battery. To access the app settings, click on the Gear icon on the top bar of the application window. Additionally, if you quit the application, your wallpaper will revert to a regular image.
I hope this tutorial helped you in setting up an animated GIF image as the wallpaper on Windows.
If you are stuck or need help, send an email, and I will try to help as much as possible.