I reverse engineered Apple's video wallpapers
Phosphene is a new video wallpaper engine for macOS Tahoe that allows users to set their own videos as desktop and lock-screen wallpapers. It integrates with the system's wallpaper picker and offers features like gapless looping and power-aware playback. The app is built on Apple's private WallpaperExtensionKit framework, which may be subject to changes in future OS updates.
- ▪Phosphene allows users to import various video formats to use as wallpapers.
- ▪It features gapless looping and adapts playback based on system performance and power conditions.
- ▪The app is designed specifically for macOS Tahoe and requires Apple Silicon for optimal performance.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Phosphene A video wallpaper engine for macOS Tahoe. Phosphene is a menu bar app + wallpaper extension that plays your own video files as the macOS desktop and lock-screen wallpaper. It plugs into the system's native wallpaper picker, so videos appear alongside Apple's built-in Aerials in System Settings → Wallpaper. It is built on top of Apple's private WallpaperExtensionKit framework — the same one Apple's own Aerials use — which means playback runs out-of-process, survives app quits, and integrates with the OS-level lock-screen / idle / sleep lifecycle. ⚠️ Private framework. Phosphene loads WallpaperExtensionKit via dlopen and uses Mirror-based runtime introspection to talk to its XPC types. Apple could change this at any major OS release. The project tracks macOS 26 (Tahoe).
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at GitHub.