A video as your
Windows wallpaper.

The short answer.

What Windows offers.

Windows 11’s Personalisation › Background takes a picture, a solid colour, a slideshow or Windows spotlight, and nothing that moves. A video option was found in preview builds in September 2025 but was gone from newer ones by January 2026, without reaching the public release.

With Lively Wallpaper (free).

Lively is free and open source, and for a single Windows PC it is hard to beat. It needs Windows 10 version 1809 or later from the Microsoft Store.

1. Install Lively.

   From the Microsoft Store, or the installer on its GitHub page.

2. Drag your video into it.

   Lively’s own description: drag and drop media or web pages into Lively to set them as wallpaper.

With Wallpaper Engine ($4.99).

Wallpaper Engine, sold on Steam for Windows 10 and 11, is best known for the wallpapers people share on the Steam Workshop, but its editor also makes a wallpaper from your own file: its store page says you can “import HTML or video files”. Its designer documentation walks through the editor.

With Seasill.

1. Get Seasill.

   For Windows 10 version 2004 or later, or Windows 11, on a 64-bit PC. The first public build isn’t published yet; the waitlist hears first.

2. Add your video.

   Click Add, the + at the top right, then From your files… (Ctrl+O). Or drag the file onto Seasill’s window.

3. Set it.

   Right-click it in your Library and choose Set as wallpaper, or select it and press Enter. With several displays, choose one by name or Set on every display.

4. Fit it to the screen.

   Settings › Displays › Fill the screen fills the display and trims what doesn’t fit; turned off, it shows the whole video with bars.

5. Across two or three monitors, if you like.

   Settings › Displays › Several displays › Across spans one wallpaper over all of them, and Arrangement sets where it sits.

Every plan, Free included, plays your own videos without a limit or a mark. The limits of Free (one live display, and catalogue wallpapers at up to 1080p with a small mark, five at a time) apply to the catalogue only.

A video that looks right on the desktop.

• Match the display’s shape. A 16:9 video fills a 16:9 monitor exactly; on an ultrawide, Fill trims the top and bottom, so choose something with room to lose.
• Match its size, not more. A clip at your monitor’s resolution looks sharp; larger ones ask the graphics card to decode pixels nobody sees.
• Make it loop. A clip that ends where it began repeats without a jump. Ten to thirty seconds of slow movement is plenty.
• Keep games in mind. With Pause for full-screen apps and games on, the wallpaper stops while you play.

When it won’t play.

It vanished after Explorer restarted.

Explorer rebuilds the desktop when it restarts. Settings › Help › Help & troubleshooting › Re-attach to the desktop puts the wallpaper back.

It stops whenever a game or a full-screen video is open.

That is Pause for full-screen apps and games doing its job. Turn it off in Settings › Playback if you would rather it kept playing.

Only one monitor moves.

On the Free plan one display plays live and the others hold a still. The paid plans play every display.

The lock screen shows a still picture.

Turn on Settings › Lock screen › Play on the lock screen. A wallpaper that plays live from a link can’t appear there, because the lock screen doesn’t go on the internet.

Questions.

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