14 DAY TRIAL // If you often get tired of your desktop background and you’re too lazy to change it yourself, Background Boss is one alternative to your problem. It will automatically change your wallpaper at regular time intervals, turning your desktop into a slideshow of your most cherished pics.
The desktop background is all about appearance and the way it looks can change your state of spirit. Whether your wallpaper picks are inspired from nature, art or your personal life, you still need to change them periodically to keep yourself away from the “dull” factor. You can either perform this job manually, and unfortunately, at the cost of time or be smart about it and try software applications that can automate the work, such as Background Boss. It’s a cute little utility that manages desktop wallpapers with ease and keeps them spinning.
Above all things, it’s free of charge and comes wrapped up in a 2.8 MB installer that will not raise any sort of problems. The installation process requires you to push a few “Next” buttons and the whole thing will be over before you know it.
Its looks are not out of the ordinary, but still pleasant and best of all, organized, which makes the application easy to work with, even for beginners. Most of the main window is reserved for the list of wallpapers that are going to be included in the slideshow and what’s left of the space is occupied by a preview area and a section where you can set the rotation time interval.
The main window also encapsulates four menus that capture all of its features, but it’s also got a few shortcut buttons to its most important functions. These buttons allow you to save the current scenario, add wallpapers to the list or remove them, pause the slideshow, move to the next background or shuffle the image order.
All of these functions can also be triggered from the four menus that hold other useful features too. You’ve got the File section that grants you access to standard file manipulation actions, such as creating a new file or saving the existing ones. In other words, Background Boss allows you to create wallpaper scenarios, as many as you want, and switch between them according to your mood.
The Edit menu is the manager of the wallpaper list, allowing you to populate it with the desired backgrounds, but as mentioned before, this can also be performed from the associated buttons. While still in the Edit menu, you should take a minute to configure the layout for each of the wallpaper images. A simpler approach would be to tweak it directly from the wallpaper list, where it’s got a special column designed to let you choose the way the backgrounds should be displayed: Centered, Tiled, Stretched and Letterbox. The last one is a less common type for applications that deal with wallpapers and for those who are unfamiliar with the term, it’s built to fit the images to your desktop without distorting the original picture, like it happens with the “Stretch” format for instance.
When using the Letterbox format, due to keeping the aspect ratio of the images, parts of your screen will remain uncovered and by default, those areas will be colored in black. It’s not set in stone though, for you can still change it from its designated column in the wallpaper list or if you prefer, from the Edit menu.
To set the wallpapers in movement, you can make use of the Tools section or take the easy way out and use the above-mentioned shortcut buttons. Still, if you decide to use the menu, you’ll notice that for each action, the application shows the designated keyboard shortcut combination. This is great if you have a really good memory or if you use the application long enough to remember these commands, because there’s no way to customize them whatsoever.
Aside from possibilities to play the scenario, move to the next background and shuffle the items, the Tools menu also sports an option to hide the desktop icons, so you can get a better view of the slideshow.
If it were to crash, which it didn’t during our tests, you would be able to view the errors from the View menu. It’s also got a Status log section if you’re interested in a full event report.
Background Boss also places an icon in the tray menu and right clicking it will display a control panel that allows you to access almost all of its functions. Customization of the tray behavior can be performed from the Preferences menu, where you can also set the application to assign a default background color and layout for new wallpapers or for the entire list of backgrounds that populate the list. Also, the wallpaper rotation interval can be customized from this section, although this can also be done from the main window.
The support for image formats is decent; you can feed it four major image types, namely: JPG, JPEG, BMP and GIF. Its presence on your computer is barely noticeable, asking for only 7 MB of the system RAM, with no stress on the CPU. The Bad It’s not possible to add an entire picture folder to the list, nor does it support drag and drop. An option to show the previous wallpaper during the slideshow is not available, but it’s got one for the next desktop background. Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
The Good
The Truth
