Your PC background is more than just a home screen. It's a chance to express yourself and make your PC your own. From dynamically changing wallpapers to making your PC look like it's from a Windows device demo, here are the best ways to personalize your desktop.
Live wallpapers
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While you can have excellent images as your desktop background, using a live wallpaper lets you set your PC in motion. You can upload your own videos or use the web to show looping backgrounds on your PC.
To get this to work you'll need a program like Plastuer that can show a video as your background. Plastuer works with web URLs, your own videos, and a gallery of videos that are installed with it. It's a "pay what you want" program, though the minimum purchase price is $2 to cover PayPal fees.
Plastuer can be resource intensive depending on how you use it. You can create a playlist of YouTube videos to play on your desktop which can take up processing power and memory on your PC. When I ordered Plastuer, the download link showed up in my junk folder so be aware that it might not show up in your normal inbox.
WinDynamic Desktop
One of the prettier features to come with the latest MacOS update is the ability to have a wallpaper change dynamically depending on the time of day. WinDynamic Desktop brings that same functionality to Windows 10. You can even use it with the same dessert photos that are used to show of the feature for MacOS.
You tell the app your location and then it dynamically adjusts your desktop throughout the day. I'd like the option to add custom photos in the future but even as it is, WinDynamic Desktop is nice to use. It's worth pointing out that you just type in your location, so you don't have to grant the app access to your device's location and you could choose to have it change based on any region you'd like.
WallpaperHub
WallpaperHub is collection of official Microsoft Wallpapers and wallpapers inspired by Microsoft's most popular images. You can download wallpapers from the growing Windows Insider ninja cat collection or grab wallpapers that ship with devices like the Surface Pro 6.
In addition to being an excellent place to get wallpapers, WallpaperHub is also a beautiful designed PWA. It has a light and dark theme as well as transparency elements and hover effects. It's rare to see websites fully embrace both being a PWA and having Fluent Design so it's great to see WallpaperHub does both.
All of the wallpapers on the website are free to download.
Windows themes
Windows themes arrived in the Microsoft Store a while ago and are an easy way to change the look and feel of your device. Selecting a theme can change your PCs sounds for different actions, its accent color, and your wallpaper. The Microsoft Store has an ever-growing number of themes and many additions are specific to times of the year. For example, Autumn in Sweden changes your accent color to an autumnal orange and has lovely photos of Sweden in the Fall including a boat by a river and a moose in the wild.
Windows themes can be downloaded through the Microsoft Store from the themes collection which is located towards the bottom of the store.
Over to you
How do you personalize your desktop? Let us know in the comments below so people can see how you express yourself through your PC.
