There are plenty of ways in which you can customize your Windows 10 PC to make it your own and give it a unique look. Changing your desktop wallpaper with a live wallpaper is one of the simplest ways you can customize your Windows 10 PC. While Windows 10 doesn’t natively support live wallpapers, there are live wallpaper apps for Windows 10 that can help you out. So without further ado, let’s take a look at the 10 best live wallpapers for Windows 10 that you should try right now.
1. Lively Wallpaper
When it comes to live wallpapers for PCs, almost everyone knows about Wallpaper Engine. However, its paid-only offering deters many people to use the app. Well, if you want something advanced like Wallpaper Engine but absolutely free to use then Lively Wallpaper has you covered. It’s undoubtedly one of the best free and open-source software for Windows.
On top of that, Lively Wallpaper is also an open-source project which is just amazing. Packed with features like interactive webpages as wallpaper, audio visualizers as background, video wallpaper, and much more. In addition, Lively Wallpaper automatically pauses the wallpaper when a game is launched or a full-screen application is running.
What I like more is that it also brings support for multi-monitor setups, HiDPI resolution like 4K, various ultra-wide aspect ratios, drag and drop videos for live preview, etc. In summation, you have all the essential features, except for the live wallpaper editor. I would say, for a vast majority of users, Lively Wallpapers suffices the need and is a free alternative to Wallpaper Engine.
Download Lively Wallpaper (Free)
2. Wallpaper Engine
Let’s come to Wallpaper Engine, a software that offers probably the best live wallpapers for Windows 11 and Windows 10. The software includes a ton of options to choose from, including various graphics, videos, and it even allows you to pin an application or a particular website as your live wallpaper. Wallpaper Engine also allows you to personalize the animated wallpapers.
It even features some interactive wallpapers that react to the way you move and click your mouse. Wallpaper Engine supports several of the most commonly used aspect ratios, including 16:9, 219:9, 16:10, and 4:3, which means that you can run live wallpapers on your Windows 10 PC even if you have an ultra-wide monitor or a multi-monitor setup.
The next reason for you to try out Wallpaper Engine is that it includes a feature that pauses the live wallpapers while playing games, which means that the live wallpapers won’t have any adverse effect on your system’s performance. And finally, another great feature that makes Wallpaper Engine a compelling buy is that it allows you to create your own custom live wallpapers using the Wallpaper Engine Editor.
What’s more, Wallpaper Engine has a Steam Workshop where you can share and download new live wallpapers for your PC. From the looks of it, the community is quite active and thriving. As for video formats, it supports mp4, WebM, AVI, M4V, MOV, and WMV. Having said all of that, keep in mind, the popular software does not have a free offering but $3.99 is worth paying for.
Download Wallpaper Engine ($3.99 / Rs. 229)
3. DeskScapes
DeskScapes is another great live wallpaper software that allows you to animate and customize live wallpapers for your Windows 10 desktop. Not only does the software include a bunch of animated wallpapers for you to choose from, it even allows you to use your own WMV files to personalize your desktop.
The software offers over 40 special effects with which you can customize your live wallpapers, including a bunch of color effects, which work a lot like some of the best filters on Instagram. DeskScapes also allows you to recolor your existing wallpapers, supporting color customizations for the entire image, or selecting colors on any image.
To make sure that the wallpapers fit your setup, DeskScapes even includes support for several resolutions and also features multi-monitor support. What I personally like about the software is that it has a very intuitive and easy-to-use interface, which allows you to create an animated live wallpaper in no time, with the preview feature showing you exactly what your desktop will look like with the wallpaper applied.
Download DeskScapes (Free trial for 30 days, $3.99 / Rs. 414)
4. RainWallpaper
Next up is RainWallpaper, a powerful live wallpaper software that allows you to set up a wide variety of customizable animated wallpapers on your desktop. The software supports both 3D and 2D live wallpapers, and much like Wallpaper Engine, it allows you to use websites, videos, and animated wallpapers that support mouse interactions as live wallpapers on your Windows 10 PC.
RainWallpaper also boasts minimum CPU and RAM usage, which means that the live wallpaper won’t have any major effect on your system’s performance. That said, keep in mind, RainWallpaper has gone behind a paywall, and a new improved version is being tested on Steam.
Apart from that, to prevent any effect on your system’s performance, RainWallpaper also includes the capability to pause the live wallpaper when any game or full-screen applications are running. The software also includes a built-in wallpaper editor, allowing you to create your own live wallpapers, and it even includes a feature that will allow you to create a new live wallpaper using static images.
What I like is that RainWallpaper has a great selection of premade live wallpapers on DeviantArt that you can use, including some great anime live wallpapers for Windows 10 devices. All in all, if you want something like Wallpaper Engine then RainWallpaper is a great alternative.
Download RainWallpaper ($3.99 / Rs. 200)
5. WinDynamicDesktop
WinDynamicDesktop is a simple live wallpaper app for Windows 10 and it brings limited, but exciting new additions to the table. The app brings macOS dynamic wallpapers on Windows 10 — from Mojave and Catalina to Big Sur, Monterey, Ventura, and Sonoma.
You can easily download the dynamic wallpaper pack and apply the live wallpaper within a few seconds. No need to configure or tweak anything. The best part is that it has recently added some new live wallpapers too, apart from the macOS ones.
Other than that, WinDynamicDesktop is that it sits in the system tray and changes the background based on the time and day of your location. I have been using it for quite a few months and I can say that its location-based customization is absolutely great and quite reliable.
So to sum up, if you want an app that is not resource-hungry and offers some great live wallpapers for PC then WinDynamicDesktop is the one you should get.
Download WinDynamicDesktop (Free)
6. Waifu: Live Gaming Wallpapers
If you are looking for live gaming wallpapers for PC then I will strongly recommend you to head over to Waifu. It’s a website that houses tons of live wallpapers, among which gaming ones are quite incredible. It does not have its own app to apply the live wallpapers but you can use Wallpaper Engine or Lively Wallpaper to set a dynamic background.
I tested gaming wallpapers downloaded from Waifu on Lively and they worked pretty well without any incompatibility issues. I would say, go ahead and browse its website to find the best live wallpapers for gaming.
Check Out Waifu (Free)
7. MyLiveWallpapers: Live Anime Wallpapers
If you are looking for a dedicated portal where you can find the best live anime wallpapers for Windows 10, then MyLiveWallpapers is where you should head to. Just like Waifu, it has a broad range of categories, but when it comes to Anime, the website boasts of some great Anime live wallpapers.
Ranging from Tenki to Tanjiro Kamado, you have all your favorite Anime characters, free for you to download. And the best part is that MyLiveWallpapers has its own software, MLWapp, to apply live wallpapers.
Check Out MyLiveWallpapers (Free)
8. Moewalls
Similar to MyLiveWallpapers, Moewalls is another fantastic hub to download and set anime live wallpapers on Windows 10. Along with a massive library of Anime and Sci-fi related live wallpapers, it also offers the Moewalls software.
The program is easy to use and you can quickly download the live wallpaper from its website and create a new project inside the app to import the animated wallpaper. Apart from that, you can add a video URL and set an online video as your live wallpaper on Windows 10. That’s awesome, right?
The best part about Moewalls is that it’s quite lightweight and can run on a system with even 2GB of RAM. All in all, if you are looking for a way to use anime live wallpapers on Windows 10, definitely try out Moewalls.
Download Moewalls (Free)
9. Rainmeter
While Rainmeter is a desktop customization tool with support for some of the best Rainmeter skins, you can also use it to animate your Windows 10 desktop with a GIF. Many users prefer to use Rainmeter with Wallpaper Engine to create an advanced live desktop. However, Rainmeter can also render a set of images on the desktop to create an animated GIF.
For this, you need to modify the GIF folder with a custom set of images. Sure, the process is lengthy and tasking, but if you really want to set live wallpaper on Windows 10 for free then Rainmeter is a great tool for advanced customization.
Download Rainmeter (Free)
10. VLC Media Player
If you wish to use a video as your live wallpaper, you can make use of one of the popular VLC tricks. You can use the VLC media player and its Wallpaper tool to set a dynamic wallpaper on your Windows 10 computer. In order to do so, you’ll need to follow these steps:
- Open up the video file you want to use as your wallpaper on the VLC media player.
- Click on the ‘Video’ tab in the toolbar and select ‘Set as Wallpaper’ from the drop-down menu.
Yes, it’s that simple! You can even use multiple videos as live wallpapers by adding them to a playlist on VLC, but if you wish to use the same video over and over again, make sure you toggle on the loop feature on VLC.
Do note that this method isn’t ideal to setup live wallpapers on Windows 10 and you might encounter some performance issues with it. You can even use the VLC visualizers as your wallpaper, which will tune to the music you’re playing.
Well, that rounds up our list of the best live wallpapers for Windows 10. Now that you know about all the best live wallpapers you can use to spruce up your desktop, which one of the lots do you plan on trying out first? Share your views and suggestions in the comments down below and we’ll add all the worthwhile recommendations to this list.
Wallpaper Engine costs $3.99 and you can get it from Steam (buy).
Yes, Wallpaper Engine runs in the background, but it consumes very little CPU and GPU resources.
Yes, live wallpaper does affect performance, but it depends on which application you are using. We have mentioned some great apps on this list that don’t hog system resources and pause live wallpaper when you are playing a game or using an app in full screen.
To an extent, yes, live wallpapers drain the battery laptop.
