Desktoptopia: Free Screens for Your Screen
So my girlfriend asked me recently why I still had that wallpaper of Drew Barrymore sitting on my screen? I simply replied, “Darling, it’s not a wallpaper, it’s a work of art!” After several yelling matches and a ‘handful’ of slaps, I dragged my terribly sorry self back to my Mac to find a suitable alternative. Now I’ve never been one to fuss over my desktop all that much — I generally keep one folder on it called Inbox, in which I dump everything until I have time to process the items within. Thus, it’s quite possible for me to spend a week without seeing the desktop, since other applications fill my screen, keeping me busy at work (keeping me busy = skipping housework).
As you can imagine, having Drew Barrymore covering my screen could get distracting and, more recently, downright dangerous! Enter Desktoptopia: screens for your screen. This is the application that has saved my relationship, so I felt it necessary to mention it on MacApper.
Now first off, let me say that this application may have been a godsend for me, but I am serious in saying that this is quite a nice little app, especially considering it’s free! First off, one of my favorite features is multiple screens support. I don’t know how many applications out there support this, but it’s certainly been a great way to keep Drew in my life! I can just turn off the screen and my girlfriend is none-the-wiser. (hopes she’s not reading this)
As you can see from the screenshot above, it can configured to start up automatically, rotate your wallpaper at a given interval and provides these images via feeds. There are only a few feeds to select initially, however you can add and remove as you please. Also, there appear to be many desktops already available from it’s default install. The application can sit in your menu bar, and anytime you’re not happy with the current wallpaper, it’s as easy as clicking Next from the menu to move on to the next one. If you come across a wallpaper you like, say something with Drew Barrymore in it, you can even pause the rotation to give her extra screen time! Overall this application fits the bill quite nicely and doesn’t have a huge memory footprint. Finally, it also has a large collection of both standard and wide screen wallpapers available, which has been great for my girlfriend’s old G4 iBook.
Desktoptopia is currently available as v1.5 and is Universal. You can get it free here.
I bought this when it’s still a shareware
Still didn’t allow users to browse the downloaded collection for their favorite wallpapers
It’s hard to find the folder where the downloaded wallpapers are kept (a hidden folder with a ‘.’ at the beginning of it’s name stored deep inside the system folder)
One error occured, and the prefpane forgot what has been downloaded, and atempted to redownload the whole collection (bad if you only have a less than 512K connection, because some files are quite large)
I think I’ll just wait for version 2.5 before it runs on my Mac again…
How do you get the feeds of the wallpapers on desktopia site. Are they supposed to be added by default cause my feeds tab is all empty.
Any chance we can get a download of the ‘work of art’ Drew Barrymore pic? While Desktoptopia is cool, weirdly the Drew Barrymore image is waht I’m drawn to in this article…
@MySchizoBuddy – I wondered that too, but it turns out that if you start Desktoptopia from the Settings tab, it will populate the feeds tab for you, it uses a helper app to get the feeds…
Yeah, you have to start desktoptopia first
Hey, thanks for the comments, the ‘Art Work’ link is:
http://www.baacorsham.co.uk/drew/drew1280×768/drew4b.jpg
@Shaps
Gracias Amigo… Now to piss off the missus with that as my background…