Live wallpapers on Mac by hand: Metal, desktop-level windows, and a bit of math
Summary
This article explains how to build a live wallpaper app for macOS using Metal, AppKit, and SwiftUI. It walks through placing a borderless window on the desktop layer, handling Spaces and Mission Control, and rendering animated shaders in an MTKView. It also covers Retina-aware rendering, display hot-plug handling, power-state behavior, and packaging the app as a .app bundle. The piece includes practical code patterns and workarounds for macOS window management and rendering lifecycle issues.
Classifications
industries
No industries detected
applications
No applications detected
AskAI Classifications
Labels
No AI classifications detected