A tiny Mac app, just for fun
Not a wallpaper. A little world.
Living Wall turns your Mac desktop into a small living scene. Leaves sway in a slow breeze. Butterflies land on flowers, a ladybug wanders across a leaf, and a dragonfly hovers, then darts away. Turn on icon following and every icon gets its own place in the leaves. Move one and everything reacts. It never plays the same way twice.
This page is a desktop. Go on, drag something.
- Beach and Meadow free · Plant Wall $2.99
- macOS 13 or later
- No account, no permissions needed
- Icon following is optional
Two steps. The third one is optional.
- Open it. It lives in your menu bar, next to the clock. No Dock icon, no window to babysit.
- Enjoy it. The wall starts right away. No account, no permissions, nothing to set up.
- Optional: let it peek. The welcome window offers icon following. Click Turn on icon following, and macOS asks if Living Wall may control Finder. Click Allow. Living Wall uses it for one thing: asking Finder where your icons sit, like a gardener who knows where the rocks are. Then drag something. Finder still does all the real work. The wall just reacts, happily.
What's alive in there
- Visitors with their own plans
Butterflies, a bee, a dragonfly and a ladybug come and go on their own. Each one picks a flower or a leaf to land on. Who shows up, and where, is never the same twice. Bigger screens get more visitors.
- Every icon gets its own place
With icon following on, the leaves part around each icon. Drag an icon and its place follows. Park two close and their places join. Land a folder next to a resting ladybug and off it goes.
- A slow breeze
Leaves sway and cast soft, drifting shadows. Calm, never busy.
- Your call
Switch Animation and Shadows from the menu bar. Try the leaf up there . It also has a few early looks for those places.
Three walls. Two are free. Pick one.
Tap one and this whole page changes behind you. Your icons stay put. Each wall reacts to them in its own way. Beach and Meadow are free. Plant Wall is $2.99, one time. Early buyers: get Plant Wall before December 1 and every new wall released in 2026 is included.
- Plant Wall · $2.99Little pools, leaves that scoot aside, winged visitors. More about Plant Wall
- Beach · FreeYour icons become sandy islands. Waves roll in, palms sway, kayaks paddle past. More about Beach
- Meadow · FreeYour icons ride on clouds over a painted meadow. A kid with a kite. A cat. More about Meadow
More walls are growing.
The privacy bit, kept short
- It needs no permissions. With icon following on, it sees where your icons are. Not their names, not what's inside.
- No account. The app has no analytics and no trackers.
- This site sets no cookies and shows no ads. It counts visits anonymously.
- Finder stays in charge of every click, drag and drop.
Free to download.
- Open LivingWall.dmg from your Downloads.
- Drag Living Wall into Applications.
- Open it from Applications. Look for the leaf in your menu bar.
macOS 13 or later · No permissions needed · Works on every display
Beach and Meadow are free. Plant Wall is $2.99, one time. Licenses and credits
Questions, answered quickly
Does it need any permissions?
No. The wallpaper runs with no permissions at all. Icon following is optional. If you turn it on, macOS asks if Living Wall may control Finder. That is how an app asks Finder where the desktop icons are. Living Wall asks only for their positions. No names, no contents, and it never clicks anything for you.
Is it free?
The app, Beach and Meadow are free. Plant Wall is $2.99, one time. No subscription. Early buyers: get Plant Wall before December 1 and every new wall released in 2026 is included.
Will it eat my battery?
It's built to idle gently: about 30 frames a second when calm, 60 only while you drag, and it rests when it's hidden or when Animation is off.
My icons keep snapping back. Why?
Finder is tidying them. Right-click the desktop, choose Sort By → None, and turn off Use Stacks.
Spaces? More than one display?
Yes. Each display gets its own wallpaper, or keeps your normal macOS picture: choose System Wallpaper for it. A wallpaper shows on every Space of its display. To show it only on some Spaces, turn on Choose Wallpaper per Space in the menu. Other Spaces then keep your macOS picture. macOS gives apps no lasting name for a Space, so these picks last until Living Wall quits or updates. After that, only the Space you are on gets the wallpaper back.
What happens when I quit?
Your normal wallpaper comes back. Nothing on your desktop moves.
How do I get rid of it?
Quit it from the leaf in the menu bar and drop the app in the Trash. Hid the leaf? Open Living Wall again from Applications, and Settings comes back. If you turned on icon following, you can switch off its access in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Automation: turn off Finder under Living Wall.
Is it open source?
The app and Plant Wall are not. The free Beach and Meadow themes are adapted from the open-source Deskland project, and their source is public under GPL-3.0. Licenses and credits.
Windows? iPhone?
Nope, Mac only. But this page works anywhere, so drag away.