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Show HN: I reverse engineered Apple's video wallpapers

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Re: Show HN: I reverse engineered Apple's video wallpapers

#91

Post by cwizou »

Oh wow, that's seriously awesome. I did manage to reverse engineer the private screensaver `.appex` framework and make it work for Aerial 4 (I released a sample project/documentation last week here alongside v4 for those who want : https://github.com/AerialScreensaver/AppexSaverMinimal).

I also tried the same with Wallpaper appexes, the reversing seemed easy enough, but WallpaperAgent refused to load them, so I still use the classic trick of using my own window with a video player on top of the wallpaper, and below the icons.

I will have a look and check what I missed.

Re: Show HN: I reverse engineered Apple's video wallpapers

#92

Post by cwizou »

postalcoder wrote: post #25

Wow, thank you for this. I've been working on a screensaver suite but LegacyScreenSaver is so janky. I was hoping someone would figure out apple's private wallpaper framework and you did!

As far as I can tell this is for WallpaperAgent, an extension to `com.apple.wallpaper` that are ran by WallpaperAgent on the desktop. For screensavers check my other post, I posted a sample the private screensaver api to bypass that.

Apple's uses both for their own "Aerials" and they have a sync system to share the position between the screensaver player and the desktop player.

Re: Show HN: I reverse engineered Apple's video wallpapers

#93

Post by jon-wood »

ellisd wrote: post #63

Amazing, can’t wait to try this out! On a similar note, I’d love to replace Aerials on tvOS with my own videos. I have yet to figure out how to craft a working data feed that the tvOS will accept using the secret mode that I believe is used in the retail store displays.

I suspect the retail stores are using autonomous single app mode, which allows an app deployed on an MDM managed device to take control and force itself to the foreground, disabling screen sleep and other things. I briefly did some reading around it recently when wondering about putting some sort of dashboard on my TV while idle.

Re: Show HN: I reverse engineered Apple's video wallpapers

#95

Post by netsharc »

somat wrote: post #84
arkh wrote: post #69

Reminds me how windows 98 allowed using a HTML page as background. Said HTML could include videos.

And then there is X11, whatever program you want can be set to the root window. Anyhow, on topic, that windows 98 active desktop was the most unstable part of an already shaky OS. First thing to turn off when installing a new system. I mean, it would still crash if you looked at it wrong. But at least it was not dying for the fun of it anymore.

Geez, teen me loved the shininess of Active Desktop, although my Pentium 100 couldn't run it smoothly at all...

Re: Show HN: I reverse engineered Apple's video wallpapers

#97

Post by charcircuit »

dspillett wrote: post #71
charcircuit wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Encouraging such behavior will waste people's time having to deal with people on this site who can't do simple arithmetic. We shouldn't encourage people who can't properly read and understand a comment before replying either, but here we are talking to you who jumped on correcting the “2 or 3 years” to “19 years” without noticing that “2007” was in the post so the poster was obviously well aware of that. > being un…

>“2007” was in the post so the poster was obviously well aware of that.

Which is why I first included the possibility the commenter didn't know the current year.

>humans experience the passage of time at massively different rates

The commenter did not say anything related to this. The relative speed of time was not referenced.

>that is acceptable in a given environment

Humor is not very acceptable on this website compared to others, so it's important to protect this and not let outsiders from other sites to try and bring their humor here.

Re: Show HN: I reverse engineered Apple's video wallpapers

#99

Post by radley »

jermaustin1 wrote: post #90
buildbot wrote: post #10

As much (fairly well deserved) hate as Tahoe gets, the video wallpapers and transparency are such a fun Windows Vista vibe I get nostalgia. Time to set this up with the Vista waterfall wallpaper and reallllyyy feel like it’s 2007!

My big problem with Tahoe, is the lock screen animation stutters and freezes CONSTANTLY. I'm on an M3 Pro. If I can watch 4K video with no dropped frames, a simple video background should work as well, and if it doesn't, it shouldn't exist.

Are you using a Studio Monitor? Lock screen videos are incompatible with Settings > Displays > Refresh rate > Adaptive. You have to use a fixed frame rate (60 or 120 Hz).
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