A live wallpaper on your lock screen

Updated September 27, 2026

WallpaperMachine can animate the macOS lock screen with a video or scene wallpaper, through a lock-screen extension of its own. The feature is experimental, off by default, and needs macOS 26 Tahoe or later.

Turn it on

Apply a video or scene wallpaper to a display.
Turn on Settings → General → Animate lock screen. The same switch is on the first-run guide’s Preferences page.
Watch the status row beside the switch. It reports the feature as on only once the lock screen has drawn a frame, and offers Retry if activation failed.

What plays there

The video or scene on each display that has one. Your desktop keeps playing as before.
No sound: lock-screen audio, audio response and media integration stay off there, even when the desktop wallpaper uses them.
Your pause and battery settings apply to it too.
A scene has about 30 seconds to draw its first frame, so a heavy scene may not start where a lighter one or a video will.

Before you turn it on

It uses private macOS wallpaper interfaces and formats. A macOS update can change them and stop it working.
It takes over the lock screen and idle wallpaper on the displays it animates, and reloads macOS’s wallpaper service.
Wallpapers linked across all displays, or another wallpaper app, can prevent it. WallpaperMachine then reports the conflict rather than overwriting those choices.
It keeps separate copies of the wallpapers it shows there, as APFS clones where the disk allows, which can still take extra space.

If it doesn’t start

The status row gives the reason. “macOS did not load the lock-screen renderer” means no answer came back at all.
Keep one copy of WallpaperMachine on your Mac: every copy registers the same extension, and macOS may start any of them.
The extension keeps a log at ~/Library/Containers/app.wallpapermachine.wallpaper-extension/Data/Documents/extension.log. Attach it when you report the problem on GitHub.

Turn it off

Turning the switch off, or quitting the app, puts back the lock-screen choices WallpaperMachine made. Wallpaper changes you made elsewhere stay as they are.

Common questions

Which wallpapers can play on the lock screen?

Video and scene wallpapers applied to a display.

Can the lock screen play sound?

No. Audio, audio response and media integration stay off on the lock screen, even when the desktop wallpaper uses them.

Will it keep working after a macOS update?

It may not. It relies on private macOS wallpaper interfaces that Apple can change, so it stays experimental.