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Wallpapers are where they are in 2026. After seeing so many people interested in Windows 11 Bliss wallpaper and our Windows Central WallpaperI took another look at an app to customize wallpapers in Windows 11.
animated wallpaper allows you to set animated and interactive wallpapers on your desktop. With it, you can turn GIFs, videos, and web pages into wallpapers.
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The Lively Wallpaper website states that the app has “~0% usage” when running apps or games in full screen. In my testing, that has proven to be true on the CPU side. As I write this article, Lively Wallpaper is in the background doing nothing as I have Edge open in full screen.
But Lively Wallpaper will still use some of your system resources even when it is not active on your screen. Despite hovering between 0 and 0.3 percent CPU usage according to Task Manager, Lively Wallpaper currently uses 245.5 MB of my PC’s memory.
If I minimize Edge and other apps, Lively Wallpaper increases to about 1 percent CPU usage and uses about 255 MB of RAM.
I have a basic wallpaper for a rainy day with drops moving on my screen. Switching to a YouTube video uses an astronomical 800MB of RAM. CPU usage also increases to around 4.5 percent when the YouTube video is displayed as the wallpaper.
I’m on a portable workstation with 32GB of RAM, so I don’t particularly mind an app taking up 255MB, or even 800MB, but I’d be less comfortable with that memory usage on a different PC. If you try the app, I’d love to hear how it works on your system.
I would say that while it is possible to use a YouTube video, it is not the primary use case for this app. Lively Wallpaper works best when set with a slightly animated wallpaper.
💬 Where do you get wallpapers for your PC?
I’m a little surprised to see people so passionate about wallpapers. I usually use the basic ones by default or a program changes them automatically. But having immersed myself in the world of Windows wallpapers, I can see why it’s an important part of PC customization for many.
Where do you get your wallpapers from? Do you use any program like Lively Wallpaper on your PC? Let me know in the comments!
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