I have a pretty specific taste in wallpapers. I like the anime aesthetic — detailed illustrations, the kind of art that makes your desktop feel like it means something. And I use a Mac.

Finding good horizontal wallpapers in that style is harder than it sounds. Most of what exists online is designed for phone screens. The ones that do fit a horizontal display are often not in a fitting resolution, or the resolution is high but unable to fit the screen perfectly.

On Android, I use an app called Auto Change Wallpaper — it points to a gallery folder on my device and rotates wallpapers randomly based on certain behaviours. I have over 1,000 wallpapers saved in that folder, and that constant refresh keeps things feeling new. The Mac equivalent just isn’t there.

I’m not an artist, and I can’t craft my own. And I’m not the kind of person who wants to spend an afternoon searching.

What I tried first

Before building anything, I gave the existing options a proper shot.

I tried a few macOS wallpaper apps — myWallpaper, Wallper. They’re fine, but you’re limited to what’s already in their library. If the wallpaper you want doesn’t exist there, you’re out of luck. Anyone who’s used Wallpaper Engine on Windows knows how far behind the macOS options feel by comparison.

That gap kept bothering me.

Why I decided to build something

I’m an iOS engineer by day. I work with Swift in my full-time job but hadn’t had a real reason to try SwiftUI. AI image generation had also gotten to a point where the results were genuinely good — fast, high quality, controllable. The timing felt right.

So I started building Wallpaperific: describe what you want, generate it, set it as your wallpaper. No searching, no settling.

What I actually want this to be

I want to be honest about something. I’m not trying to replace artists.

AI generation is a tool — useful for people like me who know what they want but can’t create it themselves. But there are incredibly talented artists out there who handcraft their work, and I think they deserve a proper place to share it too.

The goal for Wallpaperific is to be both things: a place where you can generate something unique to your taste, and a place where artists — whether they work with AI tools or draw by hand — can share their work with people who actually want it on their desktop.

Wallpapers are one of the most personal parts of your setup. I want Wallpaperific to reflect that.

Where things are now

The app is in early development. The core loop works — describe a wallpaper, generate it, set it as your macOS desktop. I’m preparing for a closed alpha, and I’ll be reaching out to people on the waitlist first.

If this sounds like something you’d use, join the waitlist. I’d love to have you try it early.