My New App: AI Wallpaper Generator

Ethan SK — Sat, 26 Oct 2024 13:35:00 +0000

I just released an app I've been developing for the past few weeks: AI Wallpaper Generator

It’s pretty self explanatory from the screenshot, basically you provide a prompt, and it generates images using that prompt and sets it as your desktop wallpaper at the specified update frequency.

I like to have mine set on screen wake so I can judge the beautiful (or not so) art as i’m unlocking my computer. It’s pretty sick tbh.

The app is smart and sits in the background generating to a queue ahead of time so that when the time comes to set your wallpaper, it can do so instantly without delay.

I made it because I originally wanted a way to set my desktop background to an AI generated image every time I unlocked the screen. There didn't seem to be any apps that did this for macOS, so I wrote a bash script that called OpenAI DALLE 3 API and then sets desktop wallpaper.

This kinda worked, but it was really unreliable to actually do the setting of the background, and cause a lot of glitches. I tried doing this multiple ways, even using NPM packages, but it was still not 100% reliable.

It turns out the only reliable way to set it was by using Apple's native API in Swift NSWorkspace.shared.setDesktopImageURL()

Now I already have some experience writing apps in Swift, for example the hit-success Menu Bar Dock, so I thought, why not just develop a proper app that anyone can use. I'm sure there are lots of ppl out there who'd want to create their own AI generated wallpapers like me.

So I went on a 2 week hiatus from developer my main-side-hustle, Ye Olde Meme Game 2, spent the majority of it implementing in app purchases like subscriptions that auto-renew your credits for generating images, and now we have AI Wallpaper Generator, available to download with a free trial on the Mac App Store.

I think it turned out really sick, but please use it and let me know what you think / how to improve it, I'm sure I missed some obvious stuff.
At the end of the day, I made the app to fit my needs, and while that usually makes for the best kind of app, I'm probably a bit stuck in my own bubble :)

DEV Community: Ethan SK

My New App: AI Wallpaper Generator