macpaper
Your videos.
Apple’s screensaver.
A free terminal tool that registers your clips as native macOS Screen Savers — the same Aerial system Apple ships. No floating windows. No paid wallpaper app.
One line. Then your folder.
Works on macOS 26 (Tahoe). Homebrew handles the rest.
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anantdark/macpaper/refs/heads/main/scripts/install.sh | bashmacpaper register ~/Movies/MyClips --name "My Clips"Then reopen System Settings → Screen Saver and pick your category. Answer y to save transcoded/ copies if you want faster re-registers later.
Native — not another overlay.
macpaper talks to Apple’s aerial catalog. Your clips show up next to the built-in Aerials.
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Real Screen Saver
Appears in System Settings. Idle, lock, unlock — the OS handles playback.
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Freeze that works
Encodes temporal HEVC the way WallpaperAgent expects, so stop-screensaver can freeze the frame.
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Your library
Add clips and re-run register — finished encodes are kept. Optional
transcoded/copies survive unregister so you don’t encode twice. -
Open & free
GPL-3.0. No subscription. No account. Just a CLI and Apple’s own pipelines.
Three steps.
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01
Install
One-shot curl or
brew install macpaper. -
02
Register a folder
macpaper register ~/Movies/MyClips --name "My Clips" -
03
Pick it in Settings
Screen Saver → your category. That’s it.
Wallpaper apps sell you a player.
macpaper gives you the system.
Paid live-wallpaper apps often run their own engine. macpaper publishes into WallpaperAerialsExtension — the same path Apple’s Aerials use — so screensaver and wallpaper stay first-class citizens of macOS.