A maintained Komorebi alternative.
Komorebi was a popular animated-wallpaper app, but it is no longer actively maintained and breaks on newer distributions. Fresco is an actively developed alternative for live video, GIF, image, slideshow, and playlist wallpapers, with hardware-accelerated playback on X11 and Wayland.
Komorebi introduced a lot of people to live wallpapers on Linux with its video and parallax backgrounds. The problem now is maintenance: development has stalled, and getting it running on a current Ubuntu, Pop!_OS, or Debian release can mean fighting old dependencies.
Fresco is built and released today. It ships as a .deb with a one-line installer, decodes video on the GPU through mpv for low CPU, and keeps your wallpaper alive through a small daemon that restores it on login. It adds a crop and rotate editor, a wallpaper library with search, per-wallpaper sound, and a Wayland layer-shell backend that Komorebi never had.
Both are free and open source, so there is no cost to moving. If you liked Komorebi but it no longer runs cleanly, Fresco is the actively-maintained place to land.
Actively maintained
Regular releases that install cleanly on current Ubuntu, Pop!_OS, Mint, and Debian.
Modern playback
Hardware mpv decoding (VA-API, NVDEC) for low CPU, with video, GIF, and image support.
Wayland ready
A layer-shell backend for COSMIC, Hyprland, Sway, and KDE Plasma 6.
Fresco vs Komorebi
| Feature | Fresco | Komorebi |
|---|---|---|
| GUI app, no terminal | ||
| Works on X11 | ||
| Works on Wayland (layer-shell) | ||
| Hardware decode, low CPU | Partial | |
| Drag-to-crop and rotate | ||
| Playlists | ||
| Image slideshow | ||
| Wallpaper library | ||
| Built-in wallpaper catalog | ||
| Per-display wallpapers (GUI) | ||
| Day and night schedules | ||
| Actively maintained | ||
| Free and open source |
Komorebi alternative FAQ
- Is Komorebi still maintained?
- Komorebi is no longer actively maintained and can be hard to run on current distributions. Fresco is an actively developed alternative.
- What is a good replacement for Komorebi?
- Fresco. It plays video, GIF, image, slideshow, and playlist wallpapers with hardware acceleration, installs as a .deb, and works on X11 and Wayland.
- Will my live wallpaper survive a reboot in Fresco?
- Yes. Fresco adds an autostart entry that restores your live wallpaper on login and self-heals the entry if it goes missing.
Try Fresco. It is free.
Free and open source under the GPL-3.0 license. Install the .deb and set your first live wallpaper in a minute.