Random Background

What is it?

Random Background is a free program that changes the Windows wallpaper after a certain amount of time.

It is useful if you have a lot of wallpaper images and want to use a new one often without having to change the wallpaper manually.

This software is released under the X11 license.

The automatic change interval can be anywhere between one minute and one day.
Both bitmaps and JPEGs can be used as wallpaper sources.
Wallpaper images can be cycled through or randomly picked.
The wallpaper directory may contain subdirectories (useful if you have a LOT of wallpaper images).
The background is not changed if a fullscreen DirectX application (such as a game) is running.
Background changing is done using the lowest thread priority to avoid interfering with anything else that is running.
Automatic background changing is not done if the program is running in a Terminal Services client session (including Remote Desktop).
Multiple monitors are supported. Different wallpaper images may be used for each monitor.

Download the installer (563K) and run it. Or, download the zip file (331K) and run the program. The zip file includes the source code.

The current version is 1.20. You can view the changes.

The original idea for this program, along with the DirectX detection code and wallpaper Win32 call, came from Rusty Wagner.