Shaderpaper

A wallpaper engine for Linux — a native equivalent to Wallpaper Engine on Windows, allowing GLSL shaders to run as live animated desktop wallpapers.

Demo

What it does

Shaderpaper renders an OpenGL fullscreen quad behind the desktop, executing a user-supplied GLSL fragment shader as the wallpaper. This makes it possible to run anything from simple animated gradients to complex raymarched scenes as a live, interactive desktop background.

The key challenge on Linux is that compositors manage the desktop differently across environments (X11 vs Wayland, different window managers), so Shaderpaper integrates at the compositor level to render below all other windows without conflicting with the desktop session.

Features

• GLSL fragment shader wallpapers with hot reload
• Runs on Linux (X11)
• Low-overhead rendering — designed to have minimal impact on system performance
• Compatible with standard Shadertoy-style shader uniforms (iTime, iResolution, etc.)

Technologies

• C++ / OpenGL
• X11 window management
• GLSL