swaybg-swapper

A simple Python systemd service for swapping swaybg backgrounds on the fly.

What Does It Do?

It kills the running swaybg process and starts a new one with backgrounds chosen randomly from the configuration file.

That’s it. Nothing fancy.

Why Should I Use This?

Eh, you don’t have to. I was looking for a way to change my wallpaper at set intervals that

• supported multi-monitor setups properly,
• didn’t reinvent the wallpaper wheel, instead used swaybg in the background,
• integrated nicely with systemd (which I use to run all my desktop related things) and
• just worked.

That didn’t seem to exist, so I made it. And since I’m probably not the only one looking for it, here it is. Have fun!

How Does It Work?

1. Copy backgrounds.example.json to ~/config/sway/backgrounds.json.
2. Edit to your heart’s content. The example should be fairly self-explanatory, it’s not exactly rocket science. Nor rockets, nor science :)
3. Run make or make install. That will copy the script to ~/.local/bin, set up the systemd user service and enable its timer.
4. By default the service will change your wallpapers every 60 minutes. To customize that, copy timer.example.conf to ~/.config/systemd/user/swaybg-swapper.timer.d/timer.conf and edit the 60m timer to your desire.

You probably also want to start the service when sway starts. There are various ways to do that. If you want to keep it simple, exec a simple systemctl --user start swaybg-swapper.timer in your sway config. If you want to do it “right”, set up some sway-session.target and a drop-in config for the service that binds it to that, then have sway run the target on startup.

If you want to do it in any other way, go ahead! I’m not your dad. At least I’m fairly confident that I’m not.

Known Issues

Since I have hacked this in a couple hours from concept to “eh, works well enough”, it is not very resilient. You mess up the timer/service, you have syntax errors in your configuration file … it will just die instead of spawning a swaybg process.

On the plus side, you’ll notice when it doesn’t work. Since, you know, you don’t get your wallpapers.

How Do I Get Rid Of It?

You could just disable the timer.

To uninstall it completely, run make uninstall. That will remove the script from ~/.local/bin and remove the systemd service/timer.

It will not delete your drop-in configuration files (e.g. see 4. above).