Everything,
explained

Overview

Mural is a next-generation dynamic wallpaper app for Mac. It lets you set any video or image as your desktop wallpaper, then layer real-time color effects, live widgets, animated text, and atmospheric audio on top — all designed from a single creative workspace called the Lab.

Mural runs fully on its own — video wallpapers, Lab effects, Themes, and all creative tools work right out of the box with no additional setup. For dynamic lock screen sync, Apple's system architecture restricts what App Store apps can access at the system level. To bridge this, Mural works together with Mural Engine — a free companion app that Mural opens automatically whenever your lock screen needs updating, and that quits on its own when done.

Requirements

• macOS: 14.0 Sonoma or later
• Processor: Apple Silicon (M1 or later) or Intel — both fully supported
• Mural Engine (optional, for dynamic lock screen sync only): downloaded separately from muralflow.com/mural-engine

Getting Started

1. Install Mural

Download and install Mural from the Mac App Store. On first launch, Mural will appear in your menu bar. Click the icon to open the main window.

2. Set Your First Wallpaper

From the Home tab, click Import to load any video or image from your Mac — or drag a file straight onto the window. Once loaded, click Apply to set it as your live desktop wallpaper.

You can also browse the built-in Themes library — hand-crafted cinematic wallpapers each paired with a matching atmosphere soundtrack — and apply them with a single click.

Themes

The Themes library contains curated cinematic wallpapers, each crafted with a matching atmosphere soundtrack. Hover over any card to see a live silent preview. Click to apply instantly.

Flow Mode picks a random theme from the current category — useful when you can't decide.

Freeze, Loop & History

After importing a video, the Home tab gives you precise editorial control.

Freeze Frame

Scrub the filmstrip to find any perfect still frame and lock onto it. Use the left/right arrow keys for single-frame stepping.

A-B Loop

Set an in-point and out-point to loop a specific segment of the video with frame-accurate precision.

History

Every wallpaper state you've applied is automatically saved as a history entry — complete with the exact Lab effects, Freeze frame position, or Loop range active at that moment. Each entry stores a thumbnail for quick recognition. Tap any entry to restore it exactly as it was. History is preserved across restarts.

Lab — Grading

Professional color control over any wallpaper.

• Presets: Cinematic, Noir, Vivid, Warm, Cyber — one-tap moods
• Manual controls: Hue, Saturation, Brightness, Contrast
• Texture effects: CRT Scanlines and Film Grain, rendered by Metal GPU shaders in real time

All adjustments are previewed live in the Lab window. Click Apply to push changes to your desktop.

Lab — Widgets

Add live elements directly on top of your wallpaper.

Clocks

Choose from three styles — Digital, Flip, and Analog — each with multiple sub-variants. Every color element is fully customizable. Toggle 12/24-hour format. Freely drag, resize, and rotate any clock on the canvas.

Weather & Atmosphere

Overlay real-time particle effects: Rain, Snow, Lightning, or Fog. Enable Nature Mode for an automatic weather cycle that shifts throughout the day without manual input. Each weather effect is linked to the Ambience audio system — its corresponding environmental SFX plays automatically and can be mixed independently alongside your music track.

Momo Companion

A 3D companion character whose appearance — species, colors, personality, and outfit — is deterministically generated from your Mac's serial number. Uniquely yours, consistent across reinstalls. Momo carries an umbrella in rain and reacts to lightning strikes.

M-CORE

A system monitor capsule showing live CPU and RAM usage directly on your desktop.

Custom Media

Import your own images, GIFs, or video clips as floating overlay widgets. Transparent backgrounds are fully supported — PNG images with alpha channels and videos with transparency composite directly over the wallpaper, making it easy to blend custom elements with the underlying scene. Multiple custom media widgets can be on screen simultaneously. Each video widget has its own independent volume fader.

Motion presets: Give any custom media object a life of its own — Float, Breathe, Sway, Spin, Spin CCW, Bounce, or Strobe — each available at three speeds. Motion is rendered identically everywhere it appears: the Lab preview, the home preview, your desktop, and the dynamic lock screen.

All widgets support free positioning, scaling, rotation, and a nine-position grid for quick snapping to common screen locations. Reorder any widget by dragging it in the list — list order is layer order, consistently applied across the Lab preview, the home preview, your desktop, and the dynamic lock screen.

Lab — Mantra

A typographic overlay engine that places animated text directly on your desktop.

Six animated 3D engines

• Topology — geometric mesh formations
• Ribbon — flowing ribbon trails
• Torus — orbiting ring patterns
• Orbit — planetary orbit paths
• Vortex — spiral vortex motion
• Stairs — cascading stair sequences

Each engine has its own motion parameters (speed, distortion, repeat) and full RGB color control — with HDR values supported for glow effects.

Serendipity Mode

Automatically rotates a curated stream of phrases on a set interval, keeping your desktop feeling alive without any manual input.

Custom Text

Write your own words across multiple independent lines. Each line keeps its own typography, background, and shadow, along with a kinetic motion of its own — Float, Prism, Holo, Focus, Pulse, Glitch, or Neon — and can be freely positioned on the canvas. Reorder lines by dragging in the list to control which one sits in front.

Lab — Ambience

Layer atmospheric audio over any wallpaper, from curated soundscapes to your own music library.

Built-in Presets

A library of curated ambient soundscapes — ready to apply in one tap directly from the Lab.

Custom Playlist

Import your own audio files and build a personal playlist inside the Lab. Arrange tracks in any order, then choose from four playback modes: sequential, list loop, single track loop, or shuffle. Full playback controls include play/pause, skip, and seek.

Weather Audio Linkage

The Ambience system is linked to the Widget weather layer. When a weather effect (Rain, Snow, Lightning, Fog) is active, its environmental SFX plays alongside your music — each running through a separate audio channel so they can be mixed independently without interfering with each other.

Personalization

A few more ways to make Mural feel like yours, outside the Lab.

Audio Console

All audio in Mural is routed through a four-track mixing console, accessible in Settings.

• Video — the original audio from your wallpaper video
• Atmosphere — the Ambience track (theme soundtrack or your custom playlist)
• SFX — environmental sound effects from the active weather widget
• Custom Media — audio from any video widgets placed on your desktop

Each track has an independent volume fader. A global Master bus controls the overall output level. Individual video widgets also carry their own per-widget volume control within the Widgets panel.

Menu Bar Color

Tint your menu bar to match your style, available in Settings. By default, Mural adapts the color automatically. Turn on manual mode to pick from nine preset colors or the full color wheel — Mural remembers the last color you picked.

Solid Color Wallpapers

Set a flat color as your wallpaper instead of a video or image. Choose from 20 preset colors across four palettes — Neutrals, Cool, Purple, and Warm — or pick any color with the built-in color wheel and save it to your own My Colors library for later. Turn on Shuffle to automatically rotate through a palette in order or at random, on an interval you set.

Apply & Dynamic Lock Screen Sync

Apply

Pushes all current Lab settings — Grading, Widgets, Mantra, Ambience — from the preview window to your live desktop. What you see in the Lab preview is exactly what will appear.

Dynamic Lock Screen (For Mural 3.1.0 and later)

In the Dynamic Lock Screen tab, choose what your lock screen shows:

• Sync Dynamic Wallpaper to Lock Screen — your lock screen plays your Mural wallpaper with all Lab effects applied: custom media, weather effects, Companion and Mantra text keep moving there too. Every change you make — a new wallpaper, Lab settings, Freeze or Loop — syncs to your lock screen on its own, and the status line in the tab shows its progress. Uses Mural Engine.
• Use System Wallpaper for Lock Screen — set a separate lock screen in System Settings, while Mural keeps your desktop.
• With both off, your lock screen shows a still frame of your Mural wallpaper.

Using an earlier version of Mural? Update it from the Mac App Store first.

Mural Engine Setup (Optional · for Mural 3.1.0 and later)

To sync your dynamic wallpaper to the lock screen, install Mural Engine once. Mural opens it automatically whenever it's needed.

1. Download Mural Engine from muralflow.com/mural-engine
2. Move the app to your Applications folder
3. Open Mural Engine once. The first time it opens, macOS asks you to confirm — Mural Engine is checked by Apple, so click Open.
4. In Mural, open the Dynamic Lock Screen tab and turn on Sync Dynamic Wallpaper to Lock Screen.
5. On macOS 14 and 15, click Authorize when asked and enter your administrator password. This is needed only once.