Have you always wanted a little living world on your desktop? Now you can have one :)
Each world is a live 3D scene that reacts to your cursor. There are four so far. Three are underwater: Riverbed, a planted river where a school of fish competes for food, Coral reef, a coral reef with clownfish and cleaner shrimp, and Betta, a single halfmoon betta on a black background. The fourth, Plasma globe, is a plasma lamp glowing on a table in a dark room. Bring the cursor toward the glass and the plasma reaches for it like it would for a fingertip.
Every scene is rendered live with Three.js and WebGL2. Everything runs locally, with no account or internet connection needed after setup. Desktop wallpaper support is macOS only for now; all four worlds also run in a browser. The Mac app starts with Riverbed and remembers the world you pick from its menu.
You need macOS 13 or newer and the Xcode command line tools. To install the tools, open Terminal and run:
xcode-select --installWait for that installation to finish. Download and unzip this repository, or clone it, then open Terminal in the project folder and run:
sh wallpaper/install.shThe script builds the app for your Mac, installs it at ~/Applications/Deskworlds.app, and starts it. It also adds a login item so your world starts when you sign in. Allow about 20 seconds for the first frame to appear.
The installer doesn't change your desktop picture. The world draws on top of it, and your own wallpaper still shows at login and in Mission Control.
You don't need Node.js for the wallpaper. If you already have it, npm run wallpaper runs the same installer.
Click the Deskworlds icon in the menu bar:
- World switches every screen between Riverbed, Coral reef, Betta and Plasma globe and remembers your choice.
- Feed drops ten pellets into each screen's scene, eight in Coral reef or six to eight in Betta. Uneaten pellets dissolve after 20–40 seconds of running simulation time in Riverbed, 36 seconds in Coral reef and 30 seconds in Betta, measured from when they touch the water. Plasma globe has nothing to feed, so the item is dimmed there.
- Pause / Resume controls the animation. Your choice is remembered across restarts.
- Quit closes the app until you open it again or next sign in.
Move your cursor through a scene to see its creatures react. Desktop icons, clicks and dragging work as usual. To feed them, use the menu; clicking the desktop does not drop food.
The desktop app supports macOS only. The browser preview needs a browser with WebGL2, but there is no wallpaper installer for Windows or Linux.
It uses more power than a still wallpaper because it renders a 3D scene. The amount depends on your Mac, screen resolution and number of displays. There isn't a measured battery-life estimate yet.
All four scenes use the same quality profiles and stop rendering when paused or hidden. The wallpaper also responds to window coverage, battery power, Low Power Mode and screen sleep.
Plugged in, every world renders at your display's full resolution. On battery it drops to a lower resolution, like the browser previews' Balanced profile. Frame rates follow these limits:
| Desktop state | Frame rate |
|---|---|
| Clearly visible, plugged in | Up to 60 fps |
| Clearly visible, on battery | Up to 30 fps |
| Mostly covered by windows | Up to 20 fps |
| Almost entirely covered | Stopped |
| Low Power Mode, locked screen or sleeping display | Stopped |
Pause it from the menu when you want a still wallpaper, or quit to close the app completely. The browser previews offer Eco, Balanced and Detail profiles; actual frame rates depend on the device and scene. Battery life has not been measured.
No. The wallpaper does not listen to typing in other apps or record keystrokes. All the browser previews handle Space to pause or resume, F for fullscreen, and H to hide or show controls while a scene has focus.
The wallpaper reads your cursor position so the creatures can react. It also checks window positions and sizes to estimate how much of the desktop is visible. It does not capture the contents of those windows, store cursor history, or send this information anywhere.
Once installed, Deskworlds works offline. Its code, textures and Three.js library are bundled with the app. There are no analytics or external services.
The app does not request Accessibility, Input Monitoring or Screen Recording access.
Click the menu bar icon to see the current status. The wallpaper stops when it is almost entirely covered, in Low Power Mode, and while the screen is locked or asleep.
If Reduce Motion is enabled in macOS, the wallpaper starts paused unless you have already saved a different choice. Choose Resume to animate it. Low Power Mode must be turned off before animation can resume.
Yes. Each display gets its own world, and Feed drops food on every display. Each one renders separately, so more displays can increase power use.
No. The installed app has its own copy of the scene and runs independently. You can close Terminal once installation finishes.
Download or pull the latest source, then rerun sh wallpaper/install.sh from the project folder. Editing the source alone does not update the installed app. Deskworlds was called Desktop Habitats, and before that Aquatica. The installer removes either earlier app and its login item before starting Deskworlds. Your Desktop Habitats scene and pause choices carry over; Aquatica's saved preference is left behind.
From the project folder, run:
sh wallpaper/uninstall.shOr use npm run unwallpaper. This stops the app, removes its login item and deletes the installed app. Your wallpaper was never changed, so it is already there underneath. The saved pause and world preferences are retained.
Versions before this one set a still image of the scene as the desktop picture. If you installed one of those, choose your wallpaper in System Settings, then delete ~/Pictures/Desktop Habitats.png.
A small electrostatic model drives it, and the picture is drawn from that model rather than animated by hand. A charged electrode sits at the centre of the shell. Ionised channels leave it and grow along the electric field, stiffly, with random kinks, lifted a little by the hot gas. Each ends on the inside of the glass in a brush of short surface discharges. Channels carry like charge, so their roots repel and glide apart over the electrode; each lives a few seconds, fades and strikes again where the electrode is emptiest.
A fingertip is a grounded conductor, so it pulls field lines toward itself, more strongly the nearer it is. Channels lean in, one takes the current and turns thick and white-hot, and the electrode potential drops, which dims the rest and lights the gas pink. The channel colour follows the gas: violet and blue lines near the hot electrode, red neon lines at the cooler tips. The glass adds a faint reflection of the channels in its back wall, and the table shows a blurred reflection and the light pool. The camera has a thin-lens depth of field, so channels on the near and far glass are soft while the electrode is sharp.
With Node.js 20 or newer, run this from the project folder:
npm startOpen the local preview. There is no npm install step; the library is included. Use PORT=8081 npm start if port 8080 is busy, and Ctrl+C to stop the server.
- Click a scene to drop food.
- Move the pointer through a scene to interact.
- In Plasma globe, move the cursor toward the glass: the channels lean toward it, most go out, and one bright arc runs to the point nearest the cursor. There are no controls or words on the page; Space pauses and F is fullscreen.
- In Betta, drag to look around the betta and scroll to zoom. Clicking still drops food.
- Swipe or scroll through the gallery, or use the left and right arrow keys. Open the image or name to enter a scene.
- Use Pause / Resume, Feed, Fullscreen and Hide controls in the three underwater scenes. Show controls brings the controls back.
- Press Space to pause or resume, F for fullscreen, and H to hide or show controls while a scene has focus.
- Quality offers Eco (20 fps), Balanced (30 fps, the default) and Detail (60 fps). The selection is shared between the scenes and remembered. These are frame-rate caps; lower profiles also reduce rendering resolution.
Reduce Motion starts the preview paused. Serve the page over HTTP; opening index.html directly will not load its JavaScript modules. Any static server also works, such as python3 -m http.server 8080 --bind 127.0.0.1 if you have Python installed.
Deskworlds is MIT licensed. Three.js 0.180.0 is bundled under its MIT license.
The rock, wood and sand textures come from Poly Haven under CC0: Rock Boulder Dry, Rough Wood and Sand 01. Coral reef's rock mesh, pore maps, coral texture and organism meshes are procedural, generated by the scripts in tools/.