How can I programmatically change the background in Mac OS X?
How would I go about programmatically changing the desktop background in Mac OS X? I'd like to use python, but I'm interested in any way possible. Could I hook up to Terminal and call a certain command?
From python, if you have appscript installed (sudo easy_install appscript
), you can simply do
from appscript import app, mactypes
app('Finder').desktop_picture.set(mactypes.File('/your/filename.jpg'))
Otherwise, this applescript will change the desktop background
tell application "Finder"
set desktop picture to POSIX file "/your/filename.jpg"
end tell
You can run it from the command line using osascript
, or from Python using something like
import subprocess
SCRIPT = """/usr/bin/osascript<<END
tell application "Finder"
set desktop picture to POSIX file "%s"
end tell
END"""
def set_desktop_background(filename):
subprocess.Popen(SCRIPT%filename, shell=True)
If you are doing this for the current user, you can run, from a shell:
defaults write com.apple.desktop Background '{default = {ImageFilePath = "/Library/Desktop Pictures/Black & White/Lightning.jpg"; };}'
Or, as root, for another user:
/usr/bin/defaults write /Users/joeuser/Library/Preferences/com.apple.desktop Background '{default = {ImageFilePath = "/Library/Desktop Pictures/Black & White/Lightning.jpg"; };}'
chown joeuser /Users/joeuser/Library/Preferences/com.apple.desktop.plist
You will of course want to replace the image filename and user name.
The new setting will take effect when the Dock starts up -- either at login, or, when you
killall Dock
[Based on a posting elsewhere, and based on information from Matt Miller's answer.]
I had this same question, except that I wanted to change the wallpaper on all attached monitors. Here's a Python script using appscript
(mentioned above; sudo easy_install appscript
) which does just that.
#!/usr/bin/python
from appscript import *
import argparse
def __main__():
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description='Set desktop wallpaper.')
parser.add_argument('file', type=file, help='File to use as wallpaper.')
args = parser.parse_args()
f = args.file
se = app('System Events')
desktops = se.desktops.display_name.get()
for d in desktops:
desk = se.desktops[its.display_name == d]
desk.picture.set(mactypes.File(f.name))
__main__()
Building on dF.'s answer, you could do it with Apple Script without Finder and you can do it for multiple desktops.
To set the wallpaper for desktop i
(desktop numbers start at 1):
tell application "System Events"
set currDesktop to item i of desktop
set currDesktop's picture to "image_path"
end tell
This is what I ended up doing (in Python):
SET_DESKTOP_IMAGE_WRAPPER = """/usr/bin/osascript<<END
tell application "System Events"
{}
end tell
END"""
SET_DESKTOP_IMAGE = """
set currDesktop to item {idx} of desktops
set currDesktop's picture to "{image_path}"
"""
def set_wallpapers(images):
""" images is an array of file paths of desktops """
script_contents = ""
for i, img in enumerate(images):
idx = i+1
script_contents += SET_DESKTOP_IMAGE.format(idx=idx, image_path=img)
script = SET_DESKTOP_IMAGE_WRAPPER.format(script_contents)
subprocess.check_call(script, shell=True)
Sometimes, the desktop images don't appear immediately. I don't know why this happens, but restarting the dock fixes it. To do that from python:
subprocess.check_call("killall Dock", shell=True)
By the way, you can get the number of desktops on the system using this AppleScript code:
tell application "System Events"
get the number of desktops
end tell
you can use that with subprocess.check_output
to get the output
You can call "defaults write com.apple.Desktop Background ..." as described in this article: http://thingsthatwork.net/index.php/2008/02/07/fun-with-os-x-defaults-and-launchd/
The article also goes into scripting this to run automatically, but the first little bit should get you started.
You might also be interested in the defaults man pages: http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man1/defaults.1.html
The one-line solution for Mavericks is:
osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to set desktop picture to POSIX file "/Library/Desktop Pictures/Earth Horizon.jpg"'
There are a default collection of quality images in:
/Library/Desktop Pictures/
To automate the selection of one of these across all desktops, without a 3rd party dependency:
osascript -e 'tell application "System Events" to set picture of every desktop to "/Library/Desktop Pictures/Solid Colors/Stone.png"'
Put the following in your ~/.bashrc
function wallpaper() {
wallpaper_script="tell application \"Finder\" to set desktop picture to POSIX file \"$HOME/$1\""
osascript -e $wallpaper_script
}
Use like so:
wallpaper /path/to/image.png
To add to Matt Miller's response: you can use subprocess.call() to execute a shell command as so:
import subprocess
subprocess.call(["defaults", "write", "com.apple.Desktop", "background", ...])
You can do this without killall Dock
by running a Swift script from your Python script.
Create a chwall.swift
file with the following code:
#!/usr/bin/env swift
import Cocoa
do {
// get the main (currently active) screen
if let screen = NSScreen.main {
// get path to wallpaper file from first command line argument
let url = URL(fileURLWithPath: CommandLine.arguments[1])
// set the desktop wallpaper
try NSWorkspace.shared.setDesktopImageURL(url, for: screen, options: [:])
}
} catch {
print(error)
}
Now run the above chwall.swift
file with subprocess
in Python.
import subprocess
subprocess.run(["./chwall.swift", "/path/to/your/wallpaper/file.png"])
You could also use py-appscript instead of Popening osascript or use ScriptingBridge with pyobjc which is included in 10.5 but a bit more cumbersome to use.
Another way to programmatically change the desktop wallpaper is to simply point the wallpaper setting at a file. Use your program to overwrite the file with the new design, then restart the dock: killall Dock
.
The following depends on Xcode, lynx and wget, but here's how I automatically download and install a monthly wallpaper on Mountain Lion (shamelessly stolen and adapted from http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1409827) :
#!/bin/bash
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/opt/local/bin
size=1440
dest="/usr/local/share/backgrounds/wallpaperEAA.jpg"
read -r baseurl < <(lynx -nonumbers -listonly -dump 'http://www.eaa.org/en/eaa/aviation-education-and-resources/airplane-desktop-wallpaper' | grep $size) &&
wget -q "$baseurl" -O "$dest"
killall Dock
Dump it into /etc/periodic/monthly/
and baby, you got a stew goin!
精彩评论