UnfoldMyMac for macOS
Live wallpapers that react to your work. Cover effects that follow your lid. A native Mac app, with room for your own ideas.
macOS 26+ · Open source · Made by Matterward LabsDrag or swipe down to close. Up to open.
F1-inspired wallpaper · Sample session counters
Choose a cover. It closes fully at 30°.
Native wallpaper recordings with sample data. Lid movement and covers are an interactive illustration.
Close a little and the effect moves a little. Open back up and it reverses. On a MacBook with a readable lid-angle sensor, the position of the lid controls how far the effect has progressed.
How lid control worksChoose an effect and scrub through its preview. Try the curtains halfway closed, or see where a character first peeks into view.
Choose where the effect starts and where it finishes. Adjust the range until the movement feels right for the way you close your Mac.
Effects start disabled. Enable your choice from the app; the overlay lets clicks through, and the menu-bar controls stay within reach.
Filmed at a café. Close the lid, change the scene.
See the effects and wallpapers out in the world.
02:30 · Sound onA Mac app with animations that follow your lid and live wallpapers for your desktop. See where it started, choose a look, then watch it on a real MacBook.
The full film plays the complete recordings at 1.5×. Individual clips play at their original speed. Press play for sound; HDR is available on compatible screens.
All 13 lid effects and 10 live wallpapers. Find your desktop personality.
Velvet folds and stage lighting. A curtain call for your tabs.
App render · Demo desktopChoose a scene, then press Preview to play. Wallpaper recordings show sample data.
Curtains, curious faces, and a little moonlit escape.
Choose what happens when your lid comes down.
Velvet folds and stage lighting. A curtain call for your tabs.
App render · Demo desktop
Blinking, curious characters. Your desktop has acquired witnesses.
App render · Demo desktop
Celestial paper art opens along a curved, moonlit seam.
App render · Demo desktopA sculpture moves with your Mac’s workload. A robot follows your coding sessions. Your GitHub profile becomes a city.
Ten scenes, from a GTA VI countdown to auroras around Earth. Optional personal data connections leave room for your own ideas.
Meet your next wallpaper
A little robot responds to working, waiting, and completed hook states.
App render · Sample dataA coding session can change a character’s mood. A public forecast can change the sky. The engine feeds those inputs to the wallpaper’s motion, colours, and text.
Codex Mission Control follows lifecycle hooks: starting work, using tools, asking for approval, finishing a turn, or being interrupted. The robot’s expression and status follow along.
| Codex event | Wallpaper state |
|---|---|
| Submit a prompt or run a tool | Working |
| Request permission | Needs you |
| Complete a turn | Finished |
| Interrupt the turn | Interrupted |
The active feed reads local hook records once a second. Records keep event metadata and counters; prompts, commands, and responses are discarded.
Set up Codex hooksPlanetary Kp readings and the aurora forecast shape the curtains around Earth. The data comes from NOAA’s public space-weather feeds.
Public repository and follower counts, plus recent public push events, give your profile a place in the city. Connect a username in the app.
Both sources refresh every five minutes. GitHub can delay public events, so these are periodically updated stats. See GitHub’s timing notes.
Connect another data sourceA small adapter can turn a public API response into the engine’s JSON snapshot format. Supply an updating local file or an HTTPS snapshot endpoint, then bind its values to your template. A raw API URL needs that translation unless it already returns the snapshot format.
Local snapshot files are read once a second; the standard HTTPS connector polls every five seconds. Your adapter controls upstream refreshes and API rate limits.
UnfoldMyMac is written in Swift 6 for macOS 26 and later. SwiftUI handles the interface, AppKit places the desktop windows, and Metal renders the live wallpapers and shader effects on the GPU.
Metal scenes use one GPU device and command queue. Shader libraries and render pipelines are cached across the app, so changing a scene can reuse work already done. The renderer prefers precompiled shaders when they’re available.
The wallpaper renderer uses Apple’s CAMetalDisplayLink to schedule frames for presentation. Choose a 30 or 60 fps limit; macOS power and accessibility settings can lower it automatically.
Wallpaper rendering is capped at 1,920 pixels on the longest edge before scaling to the display. Each Metal surface allows at most three frames in flight, keeping queued GPU work bounded.
| Mac state | Frame limit |
|---|---|
| Normal playbackYour choice in settings | 30 or 60fps |
| Low Power ModeAlso during serious or critical thermal pressure | 30fps maximum |
| Reduce MotionContinuous animation is still | 1update / second |
| Mac or display asleepRendering and data sampling stop | Paused |
Playback also pauses when you switch to another user’s session.
Frost uses ScreenCaptureKit to receive desktop frames in memory. Core Video exposes those frames as Metal textures without copying the pixels. Screen Recording permission is needed for Frost; the other lid effects work without it.
Read the rendering code, the wallpaper playback policy, or Apple’s Metal overview.
The renderer, data connections, and template format are in place. Now I want to see the scenes other people would put on their desktops.
Try a harbour that follows the tide, a greenhouse driven by weather data, or a character with its own reaction when Codex finishes a turn. These are ideas to build on.
Pitch something stranger, too. Share a sketch, the data it would use, and what should move. A rough drawing is enough to start a conversation.
Use an installed scene and change its colours, text layers, or data bindings in JSON. Import the template to try it on your Mac.
Contribute a template folder with its own Metal shader to the repo. The engine supplies timing, data, and display handling.
Write an adapter or a native provider for another data source. Include sample data so people can try the scene before connecting it.
Implementation and setup details are in the wallpaper engine guide. Start with an idea in the issue tracker, or send a pull request with a working scene.
Lid control needs a readable angle sensor, and support varies by MacBook model. The app requires macOS 26 or later. Check the requirements before installing.
Lid effects stay on the MacBook’s built-in display. Live wallpapers can run across your displays, including external monitors.
Import an image and try the Sculpted, Diagonal, Slide, or Burst reveal. The app keeps a local copy. You can also build a wallpaper template using the extension guide.
Give it a curtain call. Or a very small robot.
