AutoWall for Windows

Animate your wallpapers with ease

AutoWall is a free personalization software that enables you to turn animated GIFs into your PC’s wallpaper. Developed by SegoCode, this cool program is an easy-to-use application where you can set either animated image files or even videos into your own screen wallpaper. This adds another level of personalization to your computer’s appearance and makes it quite dynamic. Do note, however, that using bigger files comes at a cost to your CPU usage.

A simple tool

AutoWall functions almost similar to other wallpaper programs—however, instead of providing you with any preset choices, you’re free to create your own wallpaper. This comes in the form of choosing a GIF you like and uploading it onto this program. When you launch, you’re greeted with a highly-simple interface inside one of the smallest windows ever. There are only four actions: Browse, Apply, Reset, and a checkbox for “Set on Windows Startup.”

To start using it, simply click “Browse” and choose your GIF file. By default, it will give you two choices: a normal animated GIF and a wallpaper taken online. However, you can go ahead and open up your GIF of choice. Click “Apply” to place it as your wallpaper; click “Reset” to revert to your original desktop background. You can also use web URLs and videos instead of GIFs—however, these take a toll on your memory usage.

This software has weebp—an open-source wallpaper engine—and mpv—a media player—integrated into it, which help in displaying animated wallpapers. However, as far as other capabilities, this is where this program hits its limits. It can’t resize or rescale your GIFs like how you usually can with wallpapers using your Personalization settings so if the files aren’t in the right resolution, they may become blurry or leave blank spaces on the screen.

A regrettable limit 

All in all, AutoWall is a great tool to use if you’d like to experiment with GIFs or videos for your desktop background. It’s free and has a straightforward interface, letting you easily upload your files. It's great that its custom wallpaper support extends to videos as well, even though it’s recommended to not use them to lessen the burden on your PC. It’s only too bad that it doesn’t have a built-in editor to resize your GIFs.