I often find myself really excited about a new desktop background, only to get tired of it within a few days at most. As a fun solution to this problem, I recently created a script which changes my background a random featured photo from the many beautiful photos on Unsplash.

Here’s a sample of the end result:

My desktop at the time of writing, thanks to this script.

In order to use this script, you’ll need to register for API access, and set CLIENT_ID to the “Application ID” you’ll get after it’s created. (Unsplash requires that you set a Callback URL in order to register, but we won’t need it, so feel free to set it to anything you’d like.)

Here’s the script:

#!/usr/bin/bash

# Configuration:
CLIENT_ID=YOUR_APPLICATION_ID_FROM_UNSPLASH_HERE
OUT=~/Pictures/Backgrounds/unsplash.jpg

# Auto-detected Configuration and constants:
if hash system_profiler 2>/dev/null; then   # Mac                                                   
    WIDTH=$(system_profiler SPDisplaysDataType | grep Resolution | awk '{print $2}')                
    HEIGHT=$(system_profiler SPDisplaysDataType | grep Resolution | awk '{print $4}')               
else    # Linux                                                                                     
    WIDTH=$(xrandr --current | grep '*' | uniq | awk '{print $1}' | cut -d 'x' -f1)                 
    HEIGHT=$(xrandr --current | grep '*' | uniq | awk '{print $1}' | cut -d 'x' -f2)                
fi
URL="https://api.unsplash.com/photos/random?featured=1&w=$WIDTH&h=$HEIGHT&client_id=$CLIENT_ID"
TMP=/tmp/unsplash

# Request a random photo, and parse out some details from the resulting JSON using Perl (sort of a
# hack, but avoids adding dependencies.)
JSON=$(curl -vs $URL 2>/dev/null)
IMG=$(echo $JSON | perl -pe 's|.*"custom":"(.*?)".*|\1|')
NAME=$(echo $JSON | perl -pe 's|.*"name":"(.*?)".*|\1|')

# Download and, if successful, process the resulting photo
wget "$IMG" -O "$TMP" >/dev/null 2>&1
if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
    if hash convert 2>/dev/null; then
        convert $TMP  -fill white  -undercolor '#00000080'  -gravity SouthEast -annotate +0+5 \
                " $NAME " $OUT
    else
        mv $TMP $OUT
    fi
fi

# Update the final background
if hash convert 2>/dev/null; then   # Linux
    hsetroot -fill $OUT
elif hash osascript 2>/dev/null; then    # Mac
    osascript -e "tell application 'Finder' to set desktop picture to POSIX file '$OUT'" 
fi

Each time you call this script, it will pick a new random image and update the desktop background.¹ You can manually call it whenever you’re feeling like a new background, or automatically call it in a cronjob.²