Papyrus is a free, open-source animated wallpaper manager for Pop!_OS COSMIC. Pick a video, click it, and it becomes your live wallpaper — no accounts, no telemetry, no Wallpaper Engine required.
It also automatically extracts the dominant color from your wallpaper and applies it as your COSMIC accent color, so your entire desktop theme matches your wallpaper vibe.
- 🎬 Animated wallpapers — supports MP4, WebM, MKV, AVI, MOV
- 🎨 Auto-theme — extracts accent color from wallpaper and applies it to COSMIC
- 🌙 Auto dark/light mode — detects wallpaper brightness and switches accordingly
- 📁 Folder picker — choose any folder of video files to scan
- 🖼️ Thumbnail previews — auto-generated from your video files
- 🔁 Start on login — one toggle to persist your wallpaper across reboots
- 🚫 No telemetry, no accounts, no cloud — config is a plain JSON file
Papyrus got succesfully merged into the cosmic-flatpak repositories so and the app can be installed directly by the COSMIC Store. You can also choose to install Papyrus manually by following the installation steps mentioned in the Installation section.
- Pop!_OS 24.04 with COSMIC desktop
mpvpaper(installed automatically)ffmpeg- Python 3.10+
python3-gi, GTK4, libadwaita
First make sure that you have pip3 installed, if you don't have it you can install it via these commands:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install python3-pipAnd then run the installer:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/PSGtatitos/papyrus/main/install.sh | bashThe install script handles everything — system dependencies, mpvpaper, Pillow, and the app itself.
1. Install system dependencies
sudo apt install python3-gi gir1.2-gtk-4.0 gir1.2-adw-1 ffmpeg
pip install pillow --break-system-packages2. Install mpvpaper from source
sudo apt install git meson ninja-build libmpv-dev wayland-protocols libwayland-dev
git clone --single-branch https://github.com/GhostNaN/mpvpaper
cd mpvpaper
meson setup build --prefix=/usr/local
ninja -C build
sudo ninja -C build install
cd ..3. Install Papyrus
git clone https://github.com/PSGtatitos/papyrus
cd papyrus
chmod +x install.sh
./install.shLaunch Papyrus from your app launcher or run:
papyrus- Click any thumbnail to set it as your wallpaper
- Folder button (top left) to change the wallpaper folder
- Auto-theme DE toggle to enable/disable automatic COSMIC theming
- Start on login toggle to persist wallpaper across reboots
- Stop button (top right) to remove the wallpaper
- MoeWalls — anime/gaming, optimized WebM/MP4
- MotionBGs — 8,000+ wallpapers in 4K
- Wallsflow — growing collection, free
- Pexels Videos — cinematic/nature, 4K
Papyrus uses mpvpaper to render video files as Wayland layer surfaces behind your desktop. When you select a wallpaper, Papyrus:
- Kills any running mpvpaper instance
- Starts mpvpaper with loop enabled on your display output
- Extracts the most vibrant pixel from the video thumbnail
- Writes the color to COSMIC's compiled theme config files
- COSMIC picks up the file changes and updates the accent color
When Auto-theme DE is enabled, Papyrus writes directly to:
~/.config/cosmic/com.system76.CosmicTheme.Dark/v1/accent
~/.config/cosmic/com.system76.CosmicTheme.Dark/v1/background
~/.config/cosmic/com.system76.CosmicTheme.Mode/v1/is_dark
No restart required — COSMIC watches these files and applies changes live.
Config is stored at ~/.config/papyrus/config.json:
{
"current": "/home/user/Wallpapers/Papyrus/my-wallpaper.mp4",
"dirs": ["/home/user/Wallpapers/Papyrus"],
"output": "HDMI-A-1",
"auto_theme": true
}rm ~/.local/bin/papyrus
rm ~/.local/share/applications/io.github.papyrus.desktop
rm ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor/256x256/apps/io.github.papyrus.png
rm -rf ~/.config/papyrus
rm -f ~/.config/autostart/papyrus.desktop
update-desktop-database ~/.local/share/applicationsPull requests are welcome. For major changes, open an issue first.
Built with assistance from: Claude (Anthropic) was used as a coding assistant during development.
GPL-3.0 — same license as mpvpaper.