Wallpaper New
A moving wallpaper behind your desktop icons: a video of your own, or a picture, on every display. It plays without sound on the graphics card, pauses when nobody can see it, and never changes your Windows wallpaper.
Settings → Wallpaper
Setting it up
- Open Settings → Wallpaper.
- Click Choose file… in the Video or picture row and pick a video (MP4, MKV, WebM…) or a picture. Turning on Moving wallpaper without a file asks for one too.
- Poni turns Moving wallpaper on, and the file plays behind your desktop icons on every display, over and over.
- Choose how it fills the screen with Fit (below).
The file stays where it is: Poni remembers where it is and plays it from there, so don't delete it. If you move or delete it, the row says The file isn’t there any more. Choose it again. The trash button next to Choose file… takes the file out of Poni and turns the wallpaper off.
Turn off Moving wallpaper and your Windows wallpaper is back. It comes back as well when you quit Poni, and even if Poni closes unexpectedly. Poni never changes Windows' own wallpaper setting.
What it plays
- Videos: MP4, M4V, MOV, MKV, WebM, WMV and AVI, the kinds Windows' own video decoders play. They play muted and loop. An MP4 in H.264 always works.
- Pictures: JPG, PNG, WebP, BMP, GIF, TIFF, JPEG XR, HEIC and AVIF, as far as Windows can open them. A picture is drawn once, at the display's size.
- Every display shows the same file. A video is decoded once for all of them.
Fit
| Fit | What it does |
|---|---|
| Fill | Covers the whole display in its own proportions; what sticks out is cut off evenly on both sides. Default. |
| Fit | Shows all of it in its own proportions, with bars where its shape differs from the display's. |
| Stretch | Stretches it to the display's shape. |
| Center | At its own size in the middle; cut where it's bigger than the display. |
When it pauses
It always stops while the PC is locked, the screen is off or the PC sleeps, and goes on where it was. Under Pause there are three more, all on at first:
| Option | What it does |
|---|---|
| While an app is fullscreen | Stops while a game, a video or another fullscreen app runs. Default: on. |
| While a window covers the screen | Stops while a maximized window hides it anyway. Default: on. |
| On battery | Stops while a laptop runs on its battery, and plays again when it's plugged in. Default: on. |
With more displays, the video stops only when none of them shows it: a maximized window on one display leaves it playing on the other. While it's paused nothing is decoded or drawn, so it costs next to nothing. A picture is drawn once and doesn't need to pause.
What it says
While the Wallpaper page is open, the row under the file name follows what the wallpaper does: Playing · 3840×2160 (the video's size), Starting…, or paused and why, like Paused while an app is fullscreen or Paused on battery. When something's wrong, it says so in orange:
| Message | What to do |
|---|---|
| Windows can’t play this video. An MP4 (H.264) always works. | Windows has no decoder for this video. Convert it to MP4 (H.264), or pick another file. |
| This file has sound but no picture. | It's a sound file, or a video without a picture. Pick another file. |
| Windows can’t open this picture. | Save the picture as JPG or PNG, and pick that. |
| Pick a video (MP4, MKV, WebM…) or a picture | The file isn't a video or a picture. Pick another one. |
| Poni can’t find the desktop. It tries again when Explorer restarts. | The desktop isn't ready, for example while Windows Explorer restarts. Poni puts the wallpaper back by itself once Explorer is back. |
| It stopped working. Turn it off and on again. | The wallpaper stopped three times in a row. Turn Moving wallpaper off and on, or choose the file again. |
Where it shows
It sits behind your desktop icons and in front of the Windows wallpaper, on every display, on Windows 10 and Windows 11. The icons stay on top and work as usual. When Explorer restarts, or you add, remove or change a display, Poni puts the wallpaper back in place by itself.
Memory and the graphics card
The graphics card decodes and draws the video, so the processor stays nearly idle. Poni runs the wallpaper in a small process of its own, a second poni.exe in Task Manager, which only runs while the wallpaper is on and ends when you turn it off or quit Poni. A 4K video takes about 200 MB of memory there, a picture much less. Because it's a separate process, all of that is freed the moment you turn the wallpaper off.
Wallpaper color (the Dock's Style and Poni's Look) takes its colour from your Windows wallpaper underneath, not from the moving one. If you use both, set a Windows wallpaper in similar colours. See Dock.
The video and picture stay on your PC and play from where they are. Nothing is uploaded or downloaded. See Updates & privacy.