Omarchy 4.5 Backgrounds Can Now Be Videos, Played by the OWE Engine

Omarchy 4.5 lets your desktop background be a video. Per the manual, you drop an mp4, m4v, mov, webm, mkv or avi into ~/.config/omarchy/backgrounds/[theme] and it shows up next to your images.

• It started as a Qt Multimedia player inside the shell. Two weeks later it was swapped for OWE, a dedicated wallpaper engine, and owed.service now ships enabled (a migration handles existing installs).
• OWE decodes once for all monitors, plays audio through your default output (so pick a clip with no sound), and pauses on fullscreen, lock, monitors off and sleep.
• Battery handling is off by default. Set battery_mode to "pause" or "poster" in ~/.config/owe/config.toml for laptops.

My take

Fun, but the manual is honest: a video wallpaper “still costs far more power than a still one.” On a desktop, sure. On a laptop, flip on pause mode first. OWE is brand new too, so expect some rough edges.

God Bless, and Happy hacking!

References & Further Reading

• Omarchy 4.5 backgrounds can now be videos, played by the OWE wallpaper engine (Omarchy Central)
• Omarchy on GitHub