Rinka

Living wallpapers for Wayland: images, videos and converted Wallpaper Engine scenes,
drawn by a native Rust engine, with an editor that previews them through the same engine.

Website · Install · Contributing

What it does

• Images, videos and solid colors as wallpapers, placed with Fill, Fit, Stretch, Center or Tile. Videos decode through FFmpeg, loop, and follow their timestamps, including variable frame rates.
• Wallpaper Engine import. Reads workshop packages, converts image layers and translates effect shaders to WGSL. Every import comes with a report of what converted, what is approximated and what is missing; nothing is dropped silently.
• One engine everywhere. The renderer (Rust, wgpu) draws the wallpapers on Wayland layer-shell surfaces and, compiled to WebAssembly, the editor's WebGPU preview. Colors match byte-for-byte between the two.
• Per-display assignment from a to-scale map of your outputs. Wallpapers never take input or focus, and keep playing when the editor is closed.

Rinka is early. See what works and what's next.

Install

You need a Wayland compositor with wlr-layer-shell (Niri and Hyprland are the tested targets) and a Vulkan-capable GPU. Releases are listed on the releases page.

Nix

Try the latest release:

nix run github:zaroc-dev/rinka/stable

The stable branch always points at the newest release; nix flake update moves you to the next one. Use github:zaroc-dev/rinka for the development branch, or github:zaroc-dev/rinka/0.1.0 to stay on one release.

The editor starts the wallpaper host on its own. To have wallpapers come back after a reboot, run the host at login with --restore, which reads the assignments you made in the editor.

Home Manager

# flake.nix
inputs.rinka.url = "github:zaroc-dev/rinka/stable";

# home.nix
imports = [ inputs.rinka.homeManagerModules.default ];
services.rinka.enable = true;

Without Home Manager, add inputs.rinka.packages.${system}.default (or overlays.default) to your packages and start the host with your compositor, for example in Niri:

spawn-at-startup "rinka-host" "serve" "--restore"

Fedora

Download the .rpm from a release and install it:

sudo dnf install ./rinka-*.rpm
systemctl --user enable --now rinka-host   # restore wallpapers at login

Fedora's own FFmpeg (ffmpeg-free) cannot decode H.264 or HEVC; for those videos swap in ffmpeg-libs from RPM Fusion. The RPM is built for the Fedora release named in its file name.

Windows (experimental)

Download Rinka-Setup-<version>.exe, or the zip to run it without installing. Colors, images and scenes play; video does not yet. The builds are not signed, so SmartScreen will warn before the first start.

niri overview backdrop

Under niri, Rinka also draws a blurred, dimmed copy of each wallpaper for the overview (Mod+Tab). niri shows it only with this layer rule in your config:

layer-rule {
    match namespace="^rinka-backdrop$"
    place-within-backdrop true
}

Notes

• The editor's preview needs hardware WebGPU. On NixOS, Chromium's GPU sandbox cannot see the Vulkan drivers in /run/opengl-driver, so Rinka disables that sandbox there (the page sandbox stays on). Set RINKA_GPU_SANDBOX=1 to keep it.
• Wallpaper Engine import looks for your Steam workshop folder and the Wallpaper Engine install (for built-in effects) automatically. Use Locate folder… on the Import screen to select a Steam library, Wallpaper Engine installation, or 431960 workshop folder manually; Rinka remembers it. Rinka is not affiliated with Wallpaper Engine.
• Data lives in ~/.config/rinka.

Status

Area	State
Solid colors, images, video (FFmpeg)	Works on Niri; Hyprland expected, not yet tested
Scene import: image layers, transforms, effect shaders	Works; 264 of 277 effect shaders translate
Particles, solid and composition layers, multi-buffer effects	Next, in the order measured scenes need them
Text, sound, SceneScript, 3D	Planned
Layer editor, project stacks	Planned
Windows	Color, image, video and scene playback; broader desktop and installer acceptance checks remain open

Milestone notes with measurements: M0, M1 images, M2 video, M3 Wallpaper Engine. Windows measurements and remaining checks: Windows host.

Development

Path	Contents
crates/rinka-engine	Project model, color conventions, renderer, scenes and effects. No platform code.
crates/rinka-wasm	The engine for the editor's WebGPU preview.
crates/rinka-host	Wallpaper host: Wayland layer-shell, control socket, FFmpeg video, import and thumbnail commands.
crates/rinka-import	Wallpaper Engine conversion: packages, textures, scenes, GLSL → WGSL, reports.
app	Electron + Preact editor.
site	The website, published to GitHub Pages.

Everything builds in the dev shell:

nix develop
cargo test --workspace            # includes GPU readback tests
cargo build -p rinka-host
cd app && pnpm install && pnpm wasm && pnpm start

Useful host commands:

rinka-host serve [--socket PATH] [--restore [DIR]]
rinka-host import ITEM_DIR [--out DIR] [--allow-partial]   # prints the conversion report
rinka-host thumbnail < jobs.json
rinka-host preview DIR | --color '#1e6f73'
rinka-host video-timing FILE
rinka-host info

The control protocol (newline-delimited JSON over $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/rinka/host.sock) is documented in crates/rinka-host/src/protocol.rs.

Releasing. Set the same version in Cargo.toml and app/package.json, merge, then push a matching tag (git tag 0.1.0 && git push origin 0.1.0; a v prefix also works). The release workflow builds the Windows installer and the Fedora RPM, checks that the Nix package builds, publishes the release and fast-forwards stable. A version with a suffix (0.2.0-rc.1) becomes a pre-release and leaves stable alone.

Contributor notes (architecture, decisions, known traps, testing, roadmap) are in AGENTS.md and .agents/.

License

GPL-3.0-or-later. See LICENSE.