Lightweight animated wallpaper engine for Windows.

The goal of this project is to provide a simple wallpaper engine that works well even on older and low-end computers.

🚀 Project Status

Development has officially resumed!

The development environment is restored, and active work is underway. Stay tuned for new updates!

⚠️ CRITICAL WARNING FOR WINDOWS 11 24H2: Do NOT use MatePP on Windows 11 version 24H2. Microsoft completely changed the internal WorkerW desktop window structure. Running the engine on this version will cause rendering failures, blank backgrounds, or shell instability.

1. Go to the Releases page.
2. Download the latest installer package (MatePP_Setup.exe) or the standard standalone archive.
3. Run the installer and follow the on-screen instructions to integrate MatePP with your desktop.

MatePP is a lightweight animated wallpaper engine for Microsoft Windows.

Unlike many wallpaper applications that focus on visual effects and extensive features, MatePP focuses on efficiency, stability, and low resource usage.

The project aims to deliver smooth animated wallpapers while remaining usable on older and low-end computers.

• Lightweight design
• Direct2D rendering
• FFmpeg video decoding & playback
• Hardware accelerated decoding (where supported)
• Low CPU usage
• Low memory usage
• Designed for low-end hardware
• Open source
• Easy setup via dedicated installer
• Simple desktop integration

• Support broad range of video formats via FFmpeg
• High performance on older hardware
• Stable wallpaper rendering
• Small installation size
• Easy-to-use wallpaper manager
• Minimal resource consumption
• Open source development

• Windows 10
• Windows 11 21H2
• Windows 11 22H2
• Windows 11 23H2

• Windows 11 24H2

Windows 11 version 24H2 introduced changes to the Explorer desktop shell. These changes may affect wallpaper rendering and can cause problems such as:

• Wallpaper not appearing
• Blank desktop background
• WorkerW rendering issues

Support for Windows 11 24H2 remains highly experimental.

MatePP/
    └── Wallpaper Engine (Core Core)

MatePP-Manager/
    └── Wallpaper Manager (UI & Settings)

Current development environment tools:

• IDE: Code::Blocks
• Compiler: MinGW-w64 / GCC
• API/Libraries: Windows SDK, Direct2D, FFmpeg

Planned improvements include:

• Improved installer setup and seamless updates
• Improved playback performance with FFmpeg
• Better hardware video decoding
• Additional wallpaper formats
• More stable rendering pipeline
• Improved Windows compatibility
• DirectX rendering improvements

The roadmap may change in future releases.

Contributions, bug reports, and pull requests are welcome! Feel free to check the Issues page or submit a pull request.

Licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0.

See the LICENSE file for more information.

Made with ❤️ by PmgDev64