DreamScene is back: Microsoft's resurrecting video wallpapers, a Windows feature last seen in 2007

If you're new to PCs, you may have wondered at some point why your Windows desktop wallpaper is just so static. After all, since it's being displayed by the GPU, then surely it could be animated in some way? Well, wonder no more, because after first offering the functionality in 2007, before promptly removing it two years later, video wallpapers are making a return in a Windows 11 update.

Our chums over at Windows Central dropped the details on this one, though I'd already seen it in action through social media (e.g. Phantomofearth on X). Very simply, in a current beta build of Windows 11, you can select a movie file for the desktop wallpaper to have a fancy animated view behind your horde of shortcut icons (or behind absolutely nothing, if you're like me and hate icons on your desktop).

That's it, I'm afraid, as there's no other info about how well it works in practice, nor anything about GPU usage or the impact on battery life for laptops. But hey, it's better than nothing, right? Though part of me feels that when the update finally goes live, it probably won't change things very much.

The reason is that an awful lot of PC gamers already enjoy an animated desktop wallpaper, thanks to the likes of Wallpaper Engine. From what I've seen so far about the implementation in Windows 11, it looks like there's not much you can really do, other than run a video file in the background. Wallpaper Engine, on the other hand, supports interactive wallpapers, including 3D stuff, supports multiple displays, and integrates with Corsair's iCUE and Razer's Chroma apps—all for a measly amount of bucks.

The last time Microsoft offered anything like this was back in 2007, as part of the optional Ultimate Extras for Windows Vista. The utility was called Windows DreamScene, and I can vaguely remember playing around with it for a while before just going back to a static wallpaper.

Microsoft clearly got bored with it, too, as it greatly reduced the functionality of DreamScene in Windows 7, before binning it entirely in Windows 8. Fast forward to the start of this year, when it turned out that Microsoft had been playing around with the idea of bringing it all back, only to return to lurking mode.

Still, it's nice to know that it's really real and will get rolled out at some point relatively soon. And I know exactly what I'm going to do when I get the update: try a random mpeg file as my wallpaper, hunt around for a suitable LOTR one, then bin it all and just use the default Windows wallpaper. Yeah, I'm not good with change.

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