A substantial portion of the tech buying crowd rarely changes the default wallpaper on their devices, but for those who do, Microsoft may be cooking up a neat little dynamic wallpaper feature.
The guys over at Windows Central spotted a Behance post from Sergey Kisselev, the former Microsoft designer on the Windows team, shared a stream of images and animations of what Dynamic Wallpapers look like on Windows.
While Behance is traditionally known as a profile site for concept artists, Kisselev explains that the images shared were part of a larger effort from the Windows Creative Direction team to help emphasize the centered Start Menu and taskbar of Windows 11.
A variety of dynamic animations and still images were explored for Microsoft’s low-cost devices, primarily targeting educational users. This work was part of the Windows Creative Direction Team’s efforts to celebrate a new centered signature composition for Windows 11, highlighting its centered Start Menu and taskbar. The designs were crafted to be adaptable for light and dark modes, allowing for flexibility in interpretation and execution.
Sergey Kisselev
Based on Kisselev’s description, it would seem Microsoft was exploring the Dynamic Wallpaper feature as part of a rollout for Windows 11 at the start of its release.
Microsoft’s vision of dynamic wallpaper differs a bit from the execution by Apple with their version for newer Macs. Rather than implementing a dynamic zoom with a static image that has lighting adjustments applied gradually over time intervals, the Windows version would be a constant animation centered on the screen.
It is plausible that the Windows team wanted to help people get oriented with the center-justified placement of all the crucial UX aspects of Windows by drawing attention to them with an animated wallpaper also sitting smack-dab in the middle of the screen.
Unfortunately, Kisselev is a former member of the Windows team, so we won’t be getting any direct information about where this Dynamic Wallpaper feature is going in the future.
What we do know is that there was development breadcrumbs left in early Windows Insider builds and Zack Bowden over at Windows Central believes there were plans to deliver the feature in version 23H2.
For users who like options when it comes to wallpapers, it would be cool to see this come to Windows eventually, but with the added note that it doesn’t appear at the cost of the battery gains modern devices have had to claw back from the operating system.
Perhaps, the Windows team can divert some of those animation cycles to those coveted neural processing units rather than taxing CPU and GPUs to conserve battery and overall OS performance.
