BenthicBloom

Screencast.From.2026-08-07.14-59-21.mp4

A GNOME Shell 50 extension that rotates your wallpaper, supports looping video (live) wallpapers, and protects OLED displays from burn-in.

Features

• Auto rotation: pick one or more folders and BenthicBloom cycles through the images inside them on a timer, sequential or shuffled, with an optional crossfade. Can also apply to the lock screen.
• Live wallpapers: play a looping video or animated GIF as your desktop background. Frames are decoded with GStreamer and rendered directly on GNOME Shell's own Clutter stage. Playback can pause on battery power or while a window is fullscreen. Auto rotation suspends while a live wallpaper is on screen and resumes after.
• OLED burn-in protection, three independent toggles:
  • Pixel shifting: nudges the background a few pixels on a slow drift cycle so the same subpixels aren't lit continuously.
  • Idle dimming: fades the background after the system has been idle for a while, restores it when you're back.
  • Forced rotation: guarantees a wallpaper change after a maximum static duration, even if auto rotation is off.
• A top-bar indicator for quick access to rotation, live wallpaper, and OLED protection toggles, a "Next Wallpaper" action, and a full libadwaita preferences window.

Requirements

• GNOME Shell 50.
• For live wallpapers: GStreamer's base and good plugin sets (the good set also provides GIF decoding), with GObject-Introspection data. Without them the live wallpaper toggle stays disabled; everything else works normally.

# Arch
sudo pacman -S gst-plugins-base gst-plugins-good gst-plugins-bad gst-plugins-ugly gst-libav

# Debian/Ubuntu
sudo apt install gstreamer1.0-plugins-base gstreamer1.0-plugins-good gir1.2-gst-plugins-base-1.0

# Fedora
sudo dnf install gstreamer1-plugins-base gstreamer1-plugins-good gobject-introspection

Restart GNOME Shell after installing (log out and back in on Wayland).

Installation

From source

git clone https://github.com/quinta0/benthicbloom.git
cd benthicbloom
make install

Reload GNOME Shell (Alt+F2, type r, Enter on X11; log out and back in on Wayland), then enable the extension:

gnome-extensions enable benthicbloom@quinta0.github.io

Packaging a zip

make pack

produces dist/benthicbloom@quinta0.github.io.shell-extension.zip, installable via gnome-extensions install <file> or the Extensions app.

Configuration

Open preferences from the panel indicator's "Wallpaper Settings..." entry, or run:

gnome-extensions prefs benthicbloom@quinta0.github.io

• General: panel indicator visibility, lock screen syncing, debug logging, and the folders scanned for wallpapers.
• Rotation: enable/disable, interval, shuffle vs. sequential order, crossfade settings.
• Live Wallpaper: enable/disable, video file, source folders, mute, playback speed, power-saving pause behavior.
• OLED Protection: master switch plus independent controls for pixel shifting, idle dimming, and forced periodic rotation.

Architecture

extension.js                  Entry point: wires up the three managers + indicator
prefs.js                      libadwaita preferences window
lib/settingsKeys.js           GSettings key name constants
lib/logger.js                 Small logging wrapper gated by the debug-logging setting
lib/wallpaperSource.js        Async folder scanning for image files
lib/shuffleBag.js             No-immediate-repeat random ordering for shuffle mode
lib/rotationManager.js        Timer-driven wallpaper rotation + crossfade overlay
lib/gstreamerAvailability.js  Non-blocking GStreamer init/registry check + availability probe
lib/liveWallpaper.js          GStreamer video playback rendered onto a Clutter actor
lib/oledProtection.js         Pixel shifting, idle dimming, forced rotation
lib/indicator.js              Top-bar quick-access menu
icons/                        Bundled symbolic icons for the preferences window
schemas/                      GSettings schema

Known limitations

• The live wallpaper renders across the full stage as a single layer, so on multi-monitor setups the video spans all monitors as one canvas instead of being tiled per-monitor.
• Pixel shifting and idle dimming rely on GNOME Shell's private Main.layoutManager._backgroundGroup and Meta.IdleMonitor APIs, not part of the stable extension API, and could change in future shell versions.
• GStreamer's registry scan is skipped (trusting the existing cache) unless no cache exists yet, to avoid blocking gnome-shell's main thread, and therefore the whole screen, for several seconds right after login. A background subprocess refreshes the cache afterward so newly installed plugins still become visible eventually.

Testing

This was developed and validated (JSON, GSettings schema compilation, and JavaScript syntax) without a live GNOME Shell 50 session available in the development environment. Before relying on it, test in a nested session:

dbus-run-session -- gnome-shell --nested --wayland

or on a real GNOME 50 desktop, and please file an issue with any problems you hit.

License

GPL-3.0-or-later, see LICENSE.