Hikari

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Bring your desktop to life.

Hikari is a native live wallpaper app for macOS. Import a video, use it across your connected displays, and optionally apply the selected video through the macOS Native Lock Screen path.

Hikari release builds are ad-hoc signed and are not Apple-notarized.

What works

• AVFoundation video validation, managed copying, metadata, duplicate checks, and thumbnails
• Low-overhead looping playback across connected displays and Spaces
• Fill and Fit scaling, mute, battery pause, launch at login, and library management
• Menu bar playback and content controls
• Automatic macOS 26 Native Lock Screen updates when the selected video changes, plus transaction recovery and Restore
• Built-in and custom app/menu bar icons
• Checksum-verified Hikari updates from the normal vX.Y.Z release channel

Requirements

• macOS 15 or later
• Xcode 16 or later
• XcodeGen

The full Xcode installation is required for the Xcode scheme and XCTest suite.

Native Lock Screen disclaimer

Native Lock changes undocumented macOS wallpaper/Aerial state. Formats may change without notice, and a failed operation can require recovery. macOS 15 may request administrator authorization; macOS 26 uses the current user's Aerial store.

Keep a verified backup and do not use this feature on a managed or irreplaceable Mac. Hikari creates transaction journals and requires Restore before an app update, or before changing a recovery-required transaction. On macOS 26, selecting a different video automatically replaces an active Aerial transaction. An active transaction may create a root-readable playback copy; other local accounts on the Mac may be able to read it while Native Lock is active.

Download

Download Hikari-macOS-portable.zip from the latest release, unzip it, and move Hikari.app to Applications.

The app is ad-hoc signed, not notarized. On first launch, Control-click Hikari.app, choose Open, and confirm. Verify the download first:

shasum -a 256 -c Hikari-macOS-portable.zip.sha256

Storage migration

Hikari uses ~/Library/Application Support/Hikari as its canonical library. On first launch it merges missing content, settings, icons, and Native Lock transactions from a detected pre-Hikari support root, then moves that source directory to a recoverable .archived sibling. Existing canonical files win conflicts; no source video is deleted.

Build

brew install xcodegen
xcodegen generate
open Hikari.xcodeproj

Select the Hikari scheme. From the command line:

xcodebuild \
  -project Hikari.xcodeproj \
  -scheme Hikari \
  -configuration Debug \
  -destination 'platform=macOS' \
  CODE_SIGNING_ALLOWED=NO \
  build

For a local ad-hoc installation:

scripts/build-hikari.sh

The script builds and installs /Applications/Hikari.app. On macOS 26, changing the selected video in General automatically updates the Native Lock Screen Aerial. Restore is shown in General only while a transaction needs recovery. The script does not install a daemon or persistent privileged helper.

Test

swift test
xcodebuild \
  -project Hikari.xcodeproj \
  -scheme Hikari \
  -destination 'platform=macOS' \
  CODE_SIGNING_ALLOWED=NO \
  test

Release

Normal vX.Y.Z tags build and publish Hikari only as Hikari-macOS-portable.zip with its SHA-256 checksum. Non-tag builds run validation and tests; packaging and publishing are tag-only.

Project layout

Sources/
├── HikariApp/          Hikari menu bar UI, settings, and wallpaper windows
├── HikariCore/         Models, stores, importer, policy, and renderer
├── HikariNativeLock/   Native Lock transaction, backup, apply, and restore
└── HikariNativeTool/   One-shot administrator-authorized system operation
Archive/HikariLegacy/   Retired Hikari screen-saver and event-tap sources
Tests/
├── HikariCoreTests/
└── HikariNativeLockTests/

Current limitations

• Video support follows the AVFoundation capabilities of the installed macOS
• The same video is shown on every display; per-display content is not supported
• No playlist, online gallery, or per-display content
• Releases are ad-hoc signed and not Apple-notarized
• Native Lock uses undocumented macOS behavior and requires hands-on recovery testing on each supported macOS major version

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md. Security reports should follow SECURITY.md.

License

Hikari is released under the MIT License.