WinAnimatedWallpaper

Sometimes, a splash of art on your desktop is all you need to give you an inspiration boost in throughout your endeavors, which is where WinAnimatedWallpaper’s ability to set an animated GIF as your desktop background comes into play.

Given the program’s portable format, users can easily take it on-the-go to avoid having to run lengthy installation wizards whenever they want to use a different computer. Those with programming experience have the opportunity of taking the published source code and adding extra features to create a different program version if they so desire.

Running the application’s executable instantly moves the program into the system tray area to avoid taking up extra space on the taskbar, where users can interact with its dedicated icon. Through the settings menu, one can pick the GIF file they want to set as their background and instantly set it via the same window, thus avoiding the need to navigate additional unnecessary interfaces.

Similarly to Windows’ own background personalization menu, you can choose a “Wrap Mode” for your newly picked animated wallpaper, ranging from the “stretch” option for GIF files with a lower resolution compared to that of the display to the “tile” setting for those who prefer an array of duplicate animations to fill their screen.

While the program works well for users with a single monitor, those with multi-monitor setups may encounter an issue where the “tile” setting needs to be selected to display the wallpaper in the first place, while the app seems to favor the screen that is labelled first by Windows, instead of the one that is set as the main display in the OS’s Settings.

If you are in the market for a free program with a lightweight memory footprint and straightforward experience in terms of setting GIF files as wallpapers, then WinAnimatedWallpaper may be the right tool for you.