Ever get bored with the same old desktop wallpaper? Sure, you could go into the Preferences and change it, but wouldn’t it be nice if there was a program that would change it automatically?
If you use a Mac, you might want to try out a cool program I stumbled on the other day called Desktopia. Not the website by the same name (although that’s a good spot to check for wallpaper images, by the way), this Desktopia is a small utility that allows a Mac user to set up a series of wallpaper images, and set an interval to change them throughout the day.
What’s kind of neat about Desktopia is that it actually comes with a few sets of images, one of which – my favorite – shows a nice outdoor scene, a lot of grass and a lot of sky, at different times of day. There is a nighttime shot, with the stars and moon, an early morning shot, just before the sun comes up, a sunrise scene, a few daytime shots, and then a late afternoon and sunset scene.
Desktopia allows you to select those eight images and set intervals so that just as the sun is coming up in your real world, the sunrise image appears on your desktop. Is it nearing dusk where you are? Just set Desktopia to select that picture, and your desktop and real world will match.
Of course, you don’t have to use Desktopia as a way of telling what time it is! You can simply select any number of pictures, and how long they will display.
Desktopia is really easy to use. Simply start it up, and you’ll see a menu bar icon appear. From here, you can access the preferences, which allow you to choose a set of images, which you can enable or disable, as your mood strikes you. Once you’ve selected your series of images, simply go into the Assistant and select how long each image should last. By default, Desktopia will display each image for 60 minutes, but you can tweak that to last however long you like.
As you’re selecting your images, hit the Preview button to see a smallish preview image of each wallpaper you’re scrolling through. This can be great if you have a large number of wallpapers, all with rather nondescript names.
Desktopia is a free utility for Mac users, and although it does come with a couple nice sets of images, you can certainly select your own. As I mentioned, Desktopia the Mac utility has no connection (that I know of), to Desktopia the website filled with desktop wallpapers (and screensavers and more), but that’s certainly a nice place to find good-looking images.
To download Desktopia, simply head to its home page. The current version of Desktopia is 1.0, and although it does not appear to have been updated in quite a few months – and has only been tested on Mac 10.4 Tiger – it works as advertised on Mac 10.5 Leopard, and is a very nice addition to my software collection. So grab a copy and check it out for yourself. You’ll be glad you gave this free utility a try!
