Dynamic Wallpaper

2026-08-03

I’m still working on making time-based wallpaper in Asterias Studio. It is both easier and harder than I thought, as these things go.

Easier because you “just” create an .heic image file with metadata.

Harder because Apple doesn’t really tell you what this metadata is supposed to look like.

After a lot of searching and false starts, I have something working for Asterias Studio, supporting the workflow there.

However, it’s pretty limited. So I went looking again and found Equinox (Mac App Store, Github).

It’s pretty neat! You can put your own images in and create your own light/dark, solar, and time-based wallpapers.

In the time-based wallpaper you’re not limited to a fixed period — you can pick any time for a particular image to appear.

I still don’t understand how solar works. I think the assumption is that you have photos with geocoded data, and Apple will display them at a similar time wherever you are? Asterias images aren’t particularly set up for that sort of thing. I suppose I could, but :whatever:

I’ll keep working on the Asterias Studio wallpaper workflow, but for ad-hoc wallpapers I’ll reach for Equinox.