PaperNexus

Because life's too short to right-click > "Set as desktop background" every day.

---

PaperNexus is an automated wallpaper rotation app for Windows and Linux that lives quietly in your system tray, fetching gorgeous wallpapers and cycling through them on your schedule. Set it, forget it, and enjoy a fresh desktop every time you glance at it.

What It Does

• Fetches wallpapers automatically from online sources (Bing Daily, Spotlight, or any custom HTTP feed)
• Rotates your desktop on a schedule — intervals (seconds to years) or full cron expressions
• Runs silently in the system tray, minding its own business
• Annotates wallpapers with optional title overlays (with auto-contrasting outline) so you know what you're looking at
• Favorites & bans — heart a wallpaper to keep it around longer, or ban one you never want to see again
• Gallery view — browse your wallpaper collection, set any as current, or manage favorites/bans
• Updates itself in the background — no manual downloads required
• Starts at login so your desktop is never boring, even on a Monday morning
• Runs on Windows and Linux - KDE Plasma and GNOME are supported directly, with fallbacks for other desktops

Quick Start

Windows

1. Grab the latest PaperNexus.exe from Releases
2. Run it
3. That's it. You're done. Go get a coffee.

Linux

1. Grab PaperNexus-linux-x64 from Releases
2. chmod +x PaperNexus-linux-x64 && ./PaperNexus-linux-x64
3. Same deal. Coffee time.

The app installs itself to %LocalAppData%\PaperNexus\ on Windows and ~/.local/share/PaperNexus/ on Linux, then relaunches from there. On Linux it also registers an application launcher, so you can pin it to your dock like anything else.

PaperNexus will park itself in your system tray and start doing its thing. Right-click the tray icon for options:

Action	What Happens
Open Settings	Configure sources, schedules, and display options
Next Wallpaper	Can't wait? Skip ahead immediately
Random Wallpaper	Feeling spontaneous? Pick one at random
Exit	Say goodbye (but why would you?)

Building From Source

# Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/0Keith/PaperNexus.git
cd PaperNexus

# Restore & build
dotnet restore PaperNexus.sln
dotnet build PaperNexus.sln --configuration Release

# Run it
dotnet run --project PaperNexus

# Or publish a self-contained binary (swap win-x64 for linux-x64)
dotnet publish PaperNexus/PaperNexus.csproj \
  -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained true \
  -p:PublishSingleFile=true \
  -p:IncludeNativeLibrariesForSelfExtract=true \
  -p:PublishTrimmed=false

Running locally? Use dotnet run --project PaperNexus -- --debug. Without --debug the app installs itself and exits, so the window never appears.

Requires .NET 10 SDK.

How It Works

  You ──────── "I want pretty wallpapers"
                        │
                        ▼
              ┌─────────────────┐
              │   PaperNexus    │
              │  (system tray)  │
              └────────┬────────┘
                       │
          ┌────────────┼────────────┐
          ▼            ▼            ▼
    ┌──────────┐ ┌──────────┐ ┌──────────┐
    │ Download │ │  Switch  │ │  Auto    │
    │ Service  │ │ Service  │ │  Update  │
    └────┬─────┘ └────┬─────┘ └────┬─────┘
         │            │            │
         ▼            ▼            ▼
    Fetch from    Rotate &     Check GitHub
    online feeds  set desktop  for new builds

Under the hood, PaperNexus uses scheduled background services to keep everything humming. Wallpapers are downloaded, optionally annotated, and set as your desktop background — all without you lifting a finger.

Tech Stack

Component	Technology
Framework	.NET 10.0
UI	Avalonia UI 11.3
Architecture	MVVM with CommunityToolkit.Mvvm
Image Processing	SixLabors.ImageSharp
Scheduling	Cronos + CronExpressionDescriptor
DI & Hosting	Microsoft.Extensions.Hosting
Platform layer	See docs/platform-support.md for how Windows and Linux differ

FAQ

Q: Does it work on Linux? A: Yes. KDE Plasma (including SteamOS Desktop Mode) and GNOME are driven directly; other desktops fall back to feh, xwallpaper, or swaybg if you have one installed. macOS isn't supported yet - PRs welcome.

Q: I pinned it to my dock and the icon vanished when I closed it. A: Fixed in v141. Older builds shipped no desktop launcher, so your dock had nothing permanent to pin. Update and it sorts itself out.

Q: Will it eat my bandwidth? A: Nah. It downloads wallpapers on a schedule (default: once daily from Bing) and caches them locally. Sipping, not chugging.

Q: SmartScreen is yelling at me! A: The Windows build is signed with a self-signed certificate. SmartScreen calms down after a few people download the same release. Click "More info" > "Run anyway" if you trust us (and you should, the code is right here).

Q: How do I know the Linux download isn't tampered with? A: Authenticode is a Windows-only format, so the Linux build ships a PaperNexus-linux-x64.sha256 alongside it. Run sha256sum -c PaperNexus-linux-x64.sha256. The auto-updater checks the same digest and refuses any update it can't verify.

Q: Can I add my own wallpaper sources? A: Yes! Open Settings, add any HTTP JSON feed URL, and configure the JPath expressions to point at the image URL and title fields. Go wild.

Q: It updated itself. Should I be concerned? A: Only if you're concerned about getting bug fixes and features automatically. Updates come straight from this GitHub repo's Releases page.

Contributing

Found a bug? Have a feature idea? Want to add macOS wallpaper support and become a hero?

1. Fork the repo
2. Create a branch (git checkout -b my-cool-feature)
3. Make your changes
4. Open a PR

License

See LICENSE for details.

---

_{Made for people who believe their desktop deserves better than the default Windows wallpaper.}