14 DAY TRIAL // BioniX Wallpaper-Lite is able to automatically change your wallpaper at a given time interval. It stands out in the crowd of desktop enhancement tools thanks to its advanced package of features and file management capabilities.
This is not an ordinary wallpaper changing utility that embeds basic options. It comes with support for thematic playlist creation filters, sorting options by file size, resolution, name or rating, renaming and deletion mode, and picture downloading tasks. It's free and can be run on Windows XP, Vista, 7, and 8.
GUI reminds of an audio player's looks
The layout is based on playlists and looks like an audio player. It actually resembles Winamp's robust interface and makes it easier for you to control the process.
For example, you may activate or stop the automatic mode which alters the desktop background, set the previous or next photo from the playlist as your wallpaper, and apply the selected picture as your background image.
Leaving aside the looks of the playlist, which are easy to decode for most of the users accustomed to working with an audio player, the configuration panel cannot be described as highly intuitive. If some of the features don't ring a bell to you, you can hover the mouse cursor over a specific parameter in order to get extra information about its functionality.
If the main panel feels overwhelming, you can switch to a minimalistic layout that embeds only basic controls for managing the playlist. A digital clock can also be used as your wallpaper.
You can minimize all running programs with a single click (except for BioniX Wallpaper-Lite), press on the 'Panic!' button for quickly applying a preset wallpaper on your desktop and hiding the real one, make the desktop blank, and show or hide desktop icons and taskbar.
Playlist creation and file management options
Thematic playlists are used for storing the images that you want to use as wallpapers. You may save them to a file on your disk and import them anytime you feel your desktop needs a change.
Images can be added from JPEG, JPEG 2000, BMP, PNG, GIF, EMF, WMF, and WebShots file format in order to generate local playlists. You can add the content of an entire folder to the list, open playlist location in Windows Explorer, rename pictures, rate images, shuffle items, and view details about each photo, such as name, width and height, size, played count, and rating.
Adding photos in the working environment requires only drag-and-drop actions. Deletion tasks help you remove files from the hard drive or the current playlist and clean up the playlist by getting rid of nonexistent and duplicate files. Furthermore, you can arrange pictures in a playlist by moving items up or down and sort them using different criteria (filename, path, width, height, rating).
Besides creating local playlists, BioniX Wallpaper-Lite allows you to download multiple images from Flickr. You can perform searches by user-defined text (e.g. cars, cats, dogs, movies), go to the next or previous page with pictures, preview each item in a dedicated panel and check out thumbnails, sort the results by relevance or date, and download all items or only the selected one.
Settings are implemented for managing the downloading process. You may limit the maximum number of thumbs shown per page, reveal only pictures with a certain resolution, pick the saving directory, and check the log for errors.
Thematic playlists may be generated using dynamic web images (you may add links of the pictures taken with the webcam) or a user-defined directory, so-called 'Lock folder,' used for automatically updating its contents when you add or delete items.
In addition, you may download all photos from a given website, get linked images and items from the current page, specify the image minimum width, and add the downloaded files to playlist.
Day/night wallpaper mode is a smart feature implemented for automatically displaying light wallpapers during the day and dark images during the night. The tool is able to apply the corresponding adjustments by reading the filenames of the photos. If they contain the word 'night,' the utility shows them only the during the night. Files that do not include the word 'night' are revealed during the day. You may also set the time interval (day and night).
Countdown timer
You can make the app change the wallpaper at a custom time interval in seconds, minutes or hours using the built-in countdown timer. You may increase or decrease the time, start or stop the countdown timer, as well as set the time interval when the wallpaper is automatically modified (from 1 second up to 60 hours).
Wallpaper effects
BioniX Wallpaper-Lite lets you choose between several wallpaper styles (smart size, original size, Windows classic stretch, Windows classic tile). The smart size module lets you opt for a custom zoom value, fit mode that enlarges the image until one border touches the edges of the screen or fill style that enlarges the images so empty spaces around the photo are removed. Plus, small images can be automatically tiled.
You can flip wallpapers, mirror the first half of the photo, rotate items to different angles or automatically rotate files according with the EXIF data, and adjust the brightness, saturation and contrast.
The automatic background color mode offers you the option to fade border to black or auto-determine the image's border color and fill in the desktop with it. A calendar can be shown over the wallpaper with adjustable transparency.
Additional tools included in the package allow you to work with a batch image resizer (Painless Image Resizer) and wallpaper animator (BioniX Wallpaper Animator).
Configuration settings
The configuration panel is quite comprehensive and includes various parameters that help you set up multiple monitors (clone wallpaper on all monitors, expand image on all monitors or opt for individual wallpaper).
You can make the app run at Windows startup and automatically start the countdown or change the image instantly, configure an external image editor, select the picture that is revealed when you activate the 'Panic' mode, show the picture date over the wallpaper, ignore folders and files, reveal hardware specification over the wallpaper or use an external tool, reveal the countdown in the system tray, reassign hotkeys, organize photos using folders, disable the wallpaper changing mode when running on batteries and when the CPU exceeds a user-defined value.
The Good
The Bad
Some features can be fully accessed only in the paid versions of the utility (Extreme and Ultimate) and empower you to sort wallpapers by categories, ignore certain wallpapers, enable the smart background color mode based on the current wallpaper, work with multiple monitors for expanding the individual images on different screens, add wallpaper border, and enable the dual monitor support.
Other functions are going to be implemented in future versions of the tool, as it is currently being updated with new goodies, such as collage from multiple pictures, automatic download of only high resolution wallpapers, and embedded screensaver. A complete list of available and future features can be found on the official website of the utility, along with a comparison between the app's editions.
