(With native GNOME and KDE Plasma support, plus generic Wayland layer-shell compositors)
Transform your COSMIC, GNOME, KDE Plasma and Wayland workspace (including Niri, Hyprland and Sway) with fluid animated backgrounds, dynamic desktop color matching, and zero lag when gaming.
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/antwny/aura/main/install.sh | bashBundled video engine included. Compatible with Pop!_OS, CachyOS, Arch Linux, Fedora, and any distribution running COSMIC Desktop, KDE Plasma, GNOME, or Wayland layer-shell compositors (such as Niri, Hyprland, Sway).
Prerequisites for video playback & thumbnails:
- Arch / CachyOS:
sudo pacman -S --needed mpv ffmpeg- Pop!_OS / Ubuntu / Debian:
sudo apt install -y libmpv2 ffmpeg- Fedora:
sudo dnf install -y mpv-libs ffmpeg-free- openSUSE:
sudo zypper install -y mpv ffmpeg
Live recording: COSMIC Desktop • Wayland Layer-Shell • Seamless MPV IPC Engine — click to play
- Native Rust & Wayland Layer-Shell: Smooth 60 FPS rendering with zero compositor tearing.
- Smart Auto-Pause (0% CPU / 0% GPU): Instantly halts video playback when windows cover the desktop or when launching fullscreen games.
- Online Catalogs: Browse and download thousands of curated live and static wallpapers (MotionBGS 4K/1080p, Wallhaven UHD, Bing Daily, DenverCoder1).
- Dynamic Desktop Auto-Theming: Automatically extracts color palettes from your wallpaper to theme COSMIC window borders, accents, and controls.
- Multi-Monitor Studio: Set independent wallpapers, scaling modes (Fit, Fill, Stretch), and arrangements per screen with live hotplug support.
- Filtered Playlist Rotation: Combine source (all/favorites) with type (live/static) and keep the exact pool visible before enabling rotation.
- Quick Switcher HUD: Floating heads-up display overlay summonable from anywhere with a global shortcut.
Summon a floating overlay anywhere on your desktop with aura switcher:
- 3 Visual Styles:
- Honeycomb HUD: Geometric pointy-topped hexagon matrix with smooth camera lerp, hover expansion, and edge panning.
- Cinematic HUD: Tilted parallelogram cards with 3D perspective and ambient halo glow.
- Classic Dock: Minimalist dock bar with interactive hover pop-out and slide momentum.
- Cursor Awareness: Spawns directly on the monitor where your mouse pointer is located.
- Fluid Navigation: Arrow keys,
WASD, mouse scroll, edge hover, and 1-click wallpaper apply. - In-HUD Shortcuts: Space to Pause/Resume, F for Favorites, Esc to dismiss.
- Harmonized Accents: Shifts desktop accent colors to match wallpaper hues.
- WCAG Contrast: Automatically verifies legible text contrast.
- Auto Dark / Light: Adapts palette luminance according to the active background.
- Window Occlusion: Pauses playback when any application window covers the desktop.
- Fullscreen Games: Frees 100% of GPU and CPU resources for maximum gaming FPS.
- Battery Saver: Automatically halts video playback when unplugged to preserve laptop battery.
- Audio Control: Built-in volume slider and instant mute toggle.
Aura includes experimental support for GNOME on Wayland:
- Automatic Detection: Aura detects
XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=GNOMEand selects the appropriate backend automatically (override withAURA_BACKEND=gnome|mpvpaper). - Static Wallpapers: Applied natively via GSettings (
org.gnome.desktop.background). - Live Video Wallpapers: Powered by the Hanabi GNOME Shell extension (
gnome-ext-hanabi). Aura communicates with Hanabi over D-Bus for synchronized playback, volume, and scaling controls. - Interactive HUD: Runs via borderless toplevel windows (note: background may appear opaque/dark due to Mutter's lack of the Wayland layer-shell protocol).
- Icon Fallback: Navigation and window-control icons are bundled into a temporary hicolor overlay, with automatic Adwaita fallback when the Cosmic icon theme is not installed.
KWin keeps Plasma's desktop containment above wlr-layer-shell surfaces, so mpvpaper cannot draw a visible video on Plasma. Aura talks to Plasma's own wallpaper API over D-Bus instead:
- Native Detection:
XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=KDEselects the Plasma backend automatically. The Settings screen shows the real desktop environment and a manual backend selector (Auto,mpvpaper,GNOME,KDE,Static). - Live Video Wallpapers: Requires Smart Video Wallpaper Reborn. Aura configures
VideoUrls, fill mode, mute state and volume per screen; it never installs extensions or asks for root. - Graceful Fallback: If the plugin is missing, videos are shown as a high-resolution still poster with a one-click link to the plugin page.
- Static Wallpapers: Applied through Plasma's stock image plugin and always available, including per-output configurations.
- No mpvpaper Conflicts: Aura never launches an mpvpaper layer on Plasma, which fixes the "audio plays but the wallpaper is hidden" issue.
The
Staticbackend forces still images on every desktop. On arbitrary compositors without a native image API, it uses a poster through mpvpaper as the portable fallback.
| Action | Command | Recommended Shortcut |
|---|---|---|
| Quick Switcher HUD | aura switcher |
Super + Alt + W |
| Next Wallpaper | aura next |
Super + W |
| Previous Wallpaper | aura prev |
Super + Shift + W |
| Pause / Resume (0% GPU) | aura toggle-pause |
Super + P |
| Apply Video Directly | aura apply <file> |
File manager integration |
| Stop Wallpaper | aura stop |
Terminal / script |
| System Status | aura status |
Terminal health check |
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/antwny/aura/main/install.sh | bashDownload aura-v1.9.2-x86_64-linux.tar.gz from GitHub Releases:
tar -xzf aura-v1.9.2-x86_64-linux.tar.gz
cd aura-v1.9.2-x86_64-linux
./install.shgit clone https://github.com/antwny/aura.git
cd aura
cargo build --release
install -m 755 target/release/aura ~/.local/bin/auraTested on Linux / COSMIC Desktop (AMD Ryzen 5 4500U, Radeon Graphics, Wayland Layer-Shell):
| Benchmark | Aura (Rust) | Legacy Python/GTK Tools | Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cold Startup Time | < 20 ms | ~1,120 ms | 56x faster |
| Idle CPU (Paused / Occluded) | 0.00% | 3.5% - 8.0% | Zero battery drain |
| GPU Usage When Paused | 0.0% | 4.0% - 10.0% | 100% GPU for games |
| Desktop UI Framerate | 60+ FPS | 24 - 45 FPS | Silky smooth |
Aura is Free & Open Source software licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 (GPL-3.0). See LICENSE for details.
Inspirations & references: Papyrus and skwd-wall.
- Community: @antwny on YouTube • @antw-ny on Reddit
- Support the project with a star on GitHub ⭐ or donate via PayPal.