reddit-wallpaper*

Download pictures from from various subreddits (Reddit) to be cycled through as desktop wallpapers.

* This program is heavily based off of reddit-background by @rconradharris.

Features

• Integrates with OS folder-based background rotation
• Handles multiple subreddits
• Image resolution filtering ensures your backgrounds are always beautiful
• Flexible sorting lets you choose the quality of images it downloads

Try It

1. Download the project; or clone the repo using git, like:

   git clone https://github.com/awendland/reddit-wallpaper.git
   

2. Run it:

   cd reddit-wallpaper
   ./reddit-wallpaper
   

3. reddit-wallpaper will download the last week's top voted images with a minimum resolution of 1024x768 (though most are higher red), to ~/reddit-wallpaper.

4. You can now set your desktop wallpaper to cycle through the images in this folder

   • For OSX: About.com: Personalize Your Mac's Desktop Wallpaper
   • For Windows: Microsoft.com: Create a desktop background slide show

The default is to use images from /r/CityPorn.

Install It

The easiest way to install reddit-wallpaper is to copy it to /usr/local/bin. To do this, run this command:

cp reddit-wallpaper /usr/local/bin

Now you can run ./reddit-wallpaper whenever you would like to update the batch of images, or you can automate it.

Configure It

If you'd like to customize reddit-background so that it chooses images images from different subreddits, you can provide a configuration file at ~/.reddit-wallpaper.conf. Here’s a sample to get you started:

# Default is used across all monitors, unless overriden with a more
# specific configuration
[default]

# CityPorn has gorgeous cityscape photos, and BeachPorn has enviable beach/sand/wave photos
subreddits=CityPorn,BeachPorn

# Filter out any images with resolution below this
min_resolution=1280x1024

# Directory in which to download images
download_dir=~/reddit-wallpaper

Automate It

Once you have a configuration you like, you can set up reddit-wallpaper to query for new images weekly.

There are a number of ways to do this, but one way is to add it to your crontab.

To do this, open up your crontab in an editor:

crontab -e

And once you’ve done that, add the following line:

0 0 * * * /usr/local/bin/reddit-wallpaper

Save the file and quit the editor. Now your wallpaper stash will update every day at 12:00 am. The update will download new images from the subreddits and remove any old images from the download directory.

Advanced

Subreddit Sort Options

By default, when you specify a subreddit, you are selecting the top 25 posts over the last week.

You can customize the sort by using the following format:

<subreddit>:[sort]:[limit]:[timeframe]

Argument	Possible Values	Default
subreddit	A subreddit	None
sort	controversial, gilded, hot, new, promoted, rising, top	top
limit	An integer	25
timeframe	all, day, hour, month, week, year	week

So, for example, if you want to only include the 5 newest posts from /r/EarthPorn, you would write it as:

EarthPorn:new:5

Or if you’d like to include the top 10 posts over the year for /r/CityPorn, you’d write it as:

CityPorn:top:10:year

NOTE: Only the top and controversial sort methods use the timeframe option.

Command-Line Usage

In addition to specifying a configuration file, you can also customize reddit-wallpaper directly from the command-line.

The arguments represent each subreddit you would like to pull images from. For example, to pull city images and images from /r/CarPorn, you would run:

reddit-wallpaper CityPorn CarPorn

If you want to clear all currently downloaded images and redownload everything you would run:

reddit-wallpaper --clear

You can stipulate where to download the images to by using:

reddit-wallpaper --download-dir "~/some-other-directory"

If you'd like to adjust the minimum resolution of the images:

reddit-wallpaper --min-resolution 1920x1080

Attribution and License

This program is heavily based off of the work done by @rconradharris for reddit-background. This program was created because the desired use case was not covered by reddit-background, particularly that the background could only be changed for one of the user's spaces. Furthermore, OSX has a built in mechanism for rotating through wallpaper images in a folder, so this program was created to integrate with that existing OS functionality.

This program is licensed under the MIT License, which can be viewed at LICENSE.txt.