What I built
EWRE (Elite Wallpaper Rendering Engine) is a free live video wallpaper engine for Windows 10 and 11. It plays a video behind your desktop icons and tries to cost as little as possible while doing it.
📥 Get it on the Microsoft Store
💻 GitHub: StayElite
Why I built it
[Write 2 to 4 sentences here. What annoyed you about existing live wallpaper apps? A real reason, like "my laptop fan spun up" or "my game stuttered", is more convincing than anything generic.]
What it does
- GPU-accelerated rendering through Direct3D 11
- Hardware decoding via Media Foundation (NV12 and RGB32)
- 60+ FPS playback with no screen tearing
- Multi-monitor support: a separate wallpaper per display, or one spanning all of them
- Smart pause: rendering suspends when a fullscreen game launches, when the laptop is on battery, when the PC is locked, or when displays power down
- Formats: MP4, MKV, WebM, MOV, AVI and more
The design principle
Everything in EWRE follows one rule: the cheapest frame is the one you never render. A wallpaper is background decoration, so it should yield to whatever you're actually doing. That's why the pause conditions matter as much as the rendering pipeline.
What was hard
[Share one or two real challenges. Ideas: attaching to the desktop layer, handling multiple monitors with different resolutions, behavior across Windows versions, keeping memory stable over long sessions. Pick what's true for you.]
Performance
[If you have numbers, put them here: CPU and GPU usage while playing a 1080p or 4K clip, memory use, and battery impact. Even a single screenshot of Task Manager helps. If you don't have measurements yet, delete this section rather than guessing.]
What I'd like feedback on
- Does it behave well on your hardware? Tell me your GPU and Windows version if something breaks.
- Which features are missing for your setup?
- Are there video formats or codecs that give you trouble?
What's next
[List 2 or 3 planned features, only the ones you actually intend to build.]
Try it
EWRE is free: Microsoft Store.
If you try it, I'd like to hear how it goes in the comments. Bug reports and ideas are welcome on GitHub. 👇
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