W Engine

A Noctalia v5 plugin for applying Wallpaper Engine wallpapers from Steam Workshop.

Dependencies

Before installing this plugin, make sure you already have Wallpaper Engine installed from Steam. Without it, the plugin will not work.

You need Steam itself to download wallpapers from the Workshop, plus the linux-wallpaperengine tool.

You also need kill to stop duplicate wallpaper processes when changing wallpapers, and setsid to start the wallpaper process correctly.

For more details, see the install section below.

Plugin

Field	Value
ID	`tadomika_ari/w-engine`
Entries	Bar widget: `w-engine-widget`; panel: `w-engine-panel`; Service: `start`

Usage

Add the W Engine widget from Noctalia's widget picker, then click it to open the panel. You can also open the panel directly or bind it in your compositor:

noctalia msg panel-toggle tadomika_ari/w-engine:w-engine-panel

Action	Effect
Left click on the bar glyph	Open or close the W Engine panel
Click a wallpaper entry in the panel	Apply that wallpaper
Select an output	Change the monitor where the wallpaper is displayed

Settings

Custom path:

To define a custom path for Steam or the Workshop, you can add a specific path for W Engine. You can create a data.json file in $NOCTALIA_STATE_HOME based on this example:

{
  "personnalPath": ["path1"]
}

Replace path1 with your personal path or add other paths. The path is loaded after a reload or if you reopen the widget.

Requirements

noctalia ≥ 5.0.0
linux-wallpaperengine
kill
pkill
setsid
Wallpaper Engine
Steam for Workshop access

Install

Install W Engine from Noctalia's plugin store (Settings → Plugins), then add the widget to a bar from Settings → Bar. Plugin options live in Settings → Plugins.

Next, install Wallpaper Engine from Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/431960/Wallpaper_Engine/

Then install linux-wallpaperengine from its project page: https://github.com/Almamu/linux-wallpaperengine

Note that some Wallpaper Engine wallpapers may not work correctly on Linux, especially ones with advanced visual effects.

If you use NixOS, be aware that the package version in nixpkgs may lag behind upstream.

For local development, add your working copy as a path source instead (.luau edits hot-reload):

noctalia msg plugins source add dev path /path/to/plugins
noctalia msg plugins enable tadomika_ari/w-engine

License

MIT.