Live wallpaper
on a Mac.

The short answer.

What macOS does on its own.

Open System Settings › Wallpaper and macOS offers Dynamic Wallpapers, your own photos, four families of aerials (Landscape, Cityscape, Underwater and Earth), pictures and colours. Dynamic Wallpapers “brighten and darken, based on the time of day”. You can add a photo, an image file, a folder or a Photos album. There is nothing for a video.

The aerials are the moving ones, and Apple is precise about when they move: they “animate as you lock or unlock your Mac”, and the one you choose doubles as your screen saver by default. When you unlock, the film slows to a stop and stays as a still frame on your desktop.

macOS 27 Golden Gate, out since 14 September 2026, adds aerials of the Golden Gate Bridge that behave the same way: motion as you unlock and as the screen saver.

What an app adds.

A live wallpaper app keeps a video playing behind your windows and icons, all day rather than for the few seconds around the lock screen. The good ones also give you:

• Your own videos. Something you filmed, a loop you made, a clip you have the right to use.
• A wallpaper per display. A calm one on the laptop, something wider on the external screen.
• Change without thinking about it. A playlist that moves from morning light to a city at night as the day goes.
• Somewhere to find them. A library of wallpapers made to loop, instead of hunting for files.

The cost is energy: decoding video takes more than showing a still picture. Look for an app that can stop when you cannot see the desktop anyway.

Setting it up with Seasill.

Seasill works through macOS’s own wallpaper system, the one the aerials use, so it appears in System Settings beside Apple’s wallpapers and on the lock screen as well as the desktop.

1. Get Seasill.

   It needs macOS 26 or later on Apple silicon. The first public build is not published yet: join the waitlist to hear the day it is.

2. Choose Seasill once for each display.

   In System Settings › Wallpaper, pick any Seasill wallpaper. That hands the display to Seasill; you only do it once. If you skip it, Seasill says so and tells you where to go.

3. Set a wallpaper.

   In your Library, right-click a wallpaper and choose Set as wallpaper, or select it and press Return. With more than one display, choose Set on every display or a display by name.

4. Find something new.

   Browse searches the catalogue by words or by what you mean (“rain on a window at night”), and any wallpaper has More like this. Download and set as wallpaper does both at once.

On the Free plan one display plays live and the others hold a still of their wallpaper; catalogue wallpapers play at up to 1080p with a small mark in a corner, and your library holds five of them at a time. Your own videos are never limited and never marked. Seasill and Seasill Pro lift the limits.

Other apps worth knowing.

We would rather you found the right app than ours. A few that people choose, with their own figures:

What you need for Seasill.

Mac

macOS 26 Tahoe or later, on Apple silicon.

Your files

mp4, mov and m4v play as they are; webm, mkv and avi are converted when you add them. Pictures, even GIFs, become wallpapers too.

Free

One computer and one live display. Catalogue wallpapers at up to 1080p, with a small mark, five in your library at a time. Your own videos, never limited.

Seasill

$29 a year for one computer, with everything full: every display live, full resolution, no mark, no limit on catalogue wallpapers.

Seasill Pro

$59 a year for three computers, in any mix of Mac and Windows. Both paid plans start with a 7-day free trial.

Questions.

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