neowall is an open-source C wallpaper engine that runs GLSL shaders as your animated Linux desktop wallpaper, on both Wayland and X11, with multi-monitor support and no runtime dependencies beyond a single static binary.

Does neowall work with Shadertoy shaders?

Yes. neowall accepts unmodified Shadertoy GLSL with a void mainImage(out vec4 fragColor, in vec2 fragCoord) entry point and injects the standard Shadertoy uniforms (iTime, iResolution, iMouse, iFrame, iChannel0-3, and more). Legacy shims for texture2D and iGlobalTime are included so older shaders compile unchanged.

How do I install neowall?

On Arch, install neowall-git from the AUR (yay -S neowall-git). From source: clone the repo, run meson setup build && ninja -C build, then sudo ninja -C build install. Prebuilt binaries are on the GitHub releases page.

Yes — neowall is free and open source under the MIT license, and every shader in the gallery is free to copy and use.

About neowall.net

neowall runs GLSL shaders as your Linux wallpaper — Wayland and X11, multi-monitor, a single static C binary, no daemon-in-Python anywhere. This site is the community gallery: every shader here is rendered live in your browser with WebGL2, using the exact uniform set neowall feeds the desktop, so the preview is the wallpaper.

Install neowall

Grab the engine, then come back and copy any shader you like.

Arch (AUR)

yay -S neowall-git

From source

git clone https://github.com/1ay1/neowall && cd neowall
meson setup build && ninja -C build
sudo ninja -C build install

Prebuilt binaries are on the releases page. Full docs live in the repo.

The shader format

neowall accepts unmodified Shadertoy GLSL. Your shader defines a single entry point:

void mainImage(out vec4 fragColor, in vec2 fragCoord) {
    vec2 uv = fragCoord / iResolution.xy;
    fragColor = vec4(uv, 0.5 + 0.5 * sin(iTime), 1.0);
}

The engine injects the standard Shadertoy uniforms. These are the ones available:

Uniform	Type	What it is
`iTime`	float	Seconds since the shader started.
`iResolution`	vec3	Viewport size in pixels (xy) + pixel aspect (z).
`iMouse`	vec4	Cursor xy + click state (zw). Center on the desktop.
`iFrame`	int	Frame counter since start.
`iTimeDelta`	float	Seconds since the last frame.
`iFrameRate`	float	Frames per second.
`iDate`	vec4	Year, month, day, seconds-in-day.
`iChannel0–3`	sampler2D	Texture channels (images / feedback).
`iChannelResolution[4]`	vec3	Per-channel resolution.

For convenience, the legacy shims texture2D → texture and iGlobalTime → iTime are defined, so older Shadertoy shaders compile unchanged. This site's preview uses WebGL2 (GLSL ES 3.00) with the same wrapper, so multi-pass and texture-heavy shaders may look slightly different in-browser than on the desktop — the single-pass ones (the vast majority) are pixel-identical.

Wiring it into your config

~/.config/neowall/config.vibe:

default {
  shader retro_wave.glsl
  shader_speed 0.8
}

Per-monitor:

output {
  DP-1     { shader matrix_rain.glsl }
  HDMI-A-1 { path ~/Pictures/ duration 600 }
}

How the live previews work

Each card is a real WebGL2 context that compiles the shader source and animates it. To keep a 60-card grid smooth, previews are lazy (compile only when scrolled into view), hover-gated (animate only what you're pointing at), and budget-capped (a small scheduler keeps the number of simultaneously-animating canvases bounded, so the browser never runs out of GPU contexts). Off-screen and background-tab canvases pause entirely.

Share your own shader →