Introducing Seasill
A live wallpaper app for Mac and Windows that treats your desktop as a view, and knows when to be quiet.
A sill is the ledge of a window; the sea is what is outside it. Seasill starts from that picture: your desktop is a window, and the wallpaper is the view. It should move the way a view moves, and the rest of the time it should stay out of your way.
What it is
Seasill plays a video as your desktop wallpaper, behind your icons and windows, on the Mac and on Windows. It comes with a catalogue of thousands of live wallpapers that you search and save from inside the app, and it takes your own videos too: a file you already have, a link to a video file, or a YouTube video. A ten-hour YouTube loop is usually one short loop repeated; Seasill finds the loop and keeps only that.
An interface built around the wallpaper
The window has no sidebar. There is the wallpaper that is on your desktop now, large, with the rest of your library around it, and a small layer of floating controls that everything else grows out of and returns to. One click sets a wallpaper, and you can watch the picture you chose travel into place. For a few seconds afterwards, the app offers the way back.
Quiet when it should be
A wallpaper is looked past, not at. Seasill pauses when your windows cover the desktop, plays a lighter version on battery, and says why in a sentence whenever playback is reduced or paused. Quit the app and the wallpaper keeps playing.
Honest about each platform
The Mac and Windows do this differently underneath, and Seasill does not pretend otherwise. On the Mac the system itself plays the wallpaper, so it is on the lock screen too. On Windows, Seasill can stretch one wallpaper across all your displays, play a link live without downloading it, and put the wallpaper on the lock screen with a small service that setup installs. Where a platform cannot do something, the app says so.
Free, and two plans
Seasill is free to use with a few limits, and no time limit: it plays live on one display at a time, catalogue wallpapers play at up to 1080p with a small mark in a corner, and you keep five of them at once. Your own videos are never limited, on any plan.
Seasill ($29 a year, for one computer) and Seasill Pro ($59 a year, for three, in any mix of Mac and Windows) lift those limits: every display, full resolution, no mark, and as many catalogue wallpapers as you like. Each year includes the updates released in it, and each plan begins with a 7-day free trial. Saving from the catalogue, and a paid plan, need a Seasill account. The pricing page has the details.
Where things stand
Seasill has not been released yet. The first release will be signed and notarised, and sales open with it; until then, nothing on this site takes payment. You can try the interface in the demo on the home page, and this page will say when the release is out.
Questions: support@seasill.com.