How To Make Wallpaper Engine Run On Startup

Wallpaper Engine has entrenched itself as a staple of PC gaming, with easy support for multiple monitors, ultra-wide aspect ratios and a broad assortment of workshop content developed by the userbase on Steam. Its estimated tens of millions of total users blow competitors, like the open source Lively Wallpaper, out of the water.

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For people who don't want to manage both their Windows desktop settings and the wallpapers in the app, getting it to start automatically is a nice quality-of-life feature. Here's how to configure it to start when you boot up your machine, alongside a few other timesavers.

Configuring Wallpaper Engine To Start On Launch

When opening Wallpaper Engine, you'll be met with a rather cluttered User Interface until you take a few moments to filter through it and sort out the sections you need.

For startup settings, you'll find them under the settings wheel in the top right. It'll pop open a sub-window, and you're looking for the general settings tab within that.

As long as you're in this area of the settings, it may be worth configuring the performance settings for a first-time user: If audio playback is enabled, it's very easy to accidentally scare yourself with a loud wallpaper. After that, the top section of the general settings tab is focused on startup options.

It's important to also check the option below Start With Windows, labelled 'protect against crashes'. This ensures that if either your system or the program encounters any severe errors, the wallpaper engine will disable automatic startup temporarily. If you're using an especially intensive wallpaper that melts a graphics card or eats an entire RAM stick, this will let you safely open the app up and disable the culprit.

The crash protection setting is especially important if you use Web or Application wallpapers. Since these run their own code, they can contain defective or malicious scripts.

You don't need administrative permissions to enable it on startup but if you use the optional high-priority mode this does require admin rights. It'll also activate the app regardless of who is logging into the computer so be careful about what wallpapers you have enabled on a shared machine.

Further down on the same general settings menu, you'll find other useful options that can also be activated on startup. The override lock screen tool allows you to replace the Windows login screen with your new wallpapers but has a significant chance of clashing with Windows and antiviral software.

The Windows Lock Screen is, for good reasons, a protected piece of the operating system and does not play nicely with software that tries to interfere with it.

Screensavers have fewer security concerns compared to the lock screen. Setting up Wallpaper Engine to control your screensavers is a safer alternative to modifying your lock screen.

Testing Your Startup Apps Without Rebooting Your Computer

Opening Windows Task Manager with ctrl-shift-esc and clicking more details should reveal a tab labelled Startup. Wallpaper Engine should now be listed as one of these startup applications. It might be listed under a different application name, such as "wallpaper32".

As long as you're here, it may also be worth examining what other startup apps you have enabled and, if any, can be safely disabled. Some especially pesky apps either don't have or will hide their toggle to disable them on startup, making it easier to handle them through this menu.

If you have enabled it in high-priority mode, Wallpaper Engine will not appear on this list of startup applications. This is because the high-priority mode uses an alternative route and will activate before other programs on the startup list. The best way to check that it's working in high-priority mode is to simply reboot your machine and confirm that it opens automatically. If there are any startup issues along the way, disable high-priority mode.

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