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macOS 14+ · Free and open source

NES Wallpaper

Turn your Mac desktop into a living, playable grid of NES games and tool-assisted speedruns. Watch the rotation—or take over any tile and play.

Get NES Wallpaper View on GitHub

Signed and notarized DMG from the latest GitHub release. Requires macOS 14 or later.

Turn your Mac desktop into a living grid of NES games and tool-assisted speedruns.

NES Wallpaper runs games behind your desktop icons using the FCEUX emulator and FM2 movies from TASVideos. It is a modern macOS recreation of the 2016 UberNES “Nintendo Saver.”

Important: ROMs are not included. You must provide your own legally obtained NES ROMs.

Features

  • A configurable, multi-display grid rendered as your desktop wallpaper
  • Automatic ROM and FM2 matching, rotation, and TASVideos browsing
  • CRT-style video filters and a 30 fps Low Power Mode
  • Live keyboard takeover for playing any tile
  • An optional companion screensaver, including lock-screen playback
  • Menu bar controls, a configurable global takeover shortcut, launch at login, and remappable controls

Install

NES Wallpaper requires macOS 14 or later.

  1. Download the signed .dmg from GitHub Releases when one is available, or build from source.
  2. Open the disk image and drag NES Wallpaper.app to Applications.
  3. Open NES Wallpaper from Applications.
  4. In Settings → Library, choose folders containing your .nes ROMs and .fm2 movies.

The app lives in the menu bar. You can download FM2 movies from the built-in TASVideos browser; NES Wallpaper matches them to compatible ROMs by checksum.

Press Control-Option-G from any app to raise the wallpaper and click the game you want to play. Change or disable this shortcut in Settings → Controls.

To use the screensaver, open Settings → General, install it, then select NES Wallpaper in macOS System Settings → Wallpaper → Screen Saver.

Updates

The app checks GitHub Releases for updates via Sparkle — use Check for Updates… in the menu bar, or turn on automatic checks in Settings → General. In-app updating only works after the app has been moved to Applications (macOS runs apps launched from the disk image or ~/Downloads translocated, which Sparkle cannot update in place).

Build from source

Install Xcode Command Line Tools, clone the repository, then run:

./Scripts/make-app.sh
open "dist/NES Wallpaper.app"

For development:

swift build
swift test
./Scripts/smoke-test.sh

On toolchains that use the new SwiftPM build system (Swift 6.4+, products under .build/out), swift test needs Sparkle.framework copied beside the test products once per clean build:

mkdir -p .build/out/Products/Debug/PackageFrameworks
cp -R .build/artifacts/sparkle/Sparkle/Sparkle.xcframework/macos-arm64_x86_64/Sparkle.framework \
    .build/out/Products/Debug/PackageFrameworks/

See vendor/VENDOR.md for details about the vendored FCEUX core.

If you fork this repository and distribute your own builds, replace SUFeedURL and SUPublicEDKey in Scripts/Info.plist with your own update feed and Sparkle signing key — the committed values belong to the official releases, so fork builds would otherwise try to update from this repository's feed.

License

NES Wallpaper is free software licensed under GPL-2.0-only. Third-party attributions are listed in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md, and information about the corresponding source included with releases is in SOURCE.md.