Performance

What kind of system do I need to run lively?

Lively application and wallpapers are two separate things.

Lively comes with a video player and web browser - the wallpapers are basically videos and websites.

So to answer the question - it all depends on the wallpaper you choose to run.

Every gpu, including Intel HD graphics have dedicated hardware to decode video - so video wallpapers should be consistent in terms of resource cost if you use the same quality video (provided you are playing supported video file by your hardware, if working correctly taskmanager will show it as Video Decode in GPU Engine section.)

Website wallpaper can be made less resource intensive depending on its design (refreshing less often, low fps, simple design..)

Regardless of wallpaper type, lively will completetly pause the playback of the wallpaper when fullscreen apps or games run.

Optionally lively can:

1. Pause wallpaper based on running application.
2. Play wallpaper only on desktop. (Wallpaper Playback -> Other Application Focused -> Pause)
3. Kill wallpaper(coming soon)
4. Pause wallpaper when running on battery(laptop/ups)

Just a quick note regarding taskmanager: Looking at Taskmanager cpu & gpu usage on the Processes tab can be misleading, because it is a relative measure based on clockspeed of the hardware.

Every cpu & gpu runs at various clockspeed based on performance demand, for example if the gpu is in low performance mode(usually on desktop, clockspeed 300mhz on my gtx 750) the gpu usage will be very high which is still normal & consumes less power.

So high gpu or cpu usage can be due to low clockspeed, better to use utility like gpu-z to observe both clockspeed & usage.

If you are still worried about performance, I recommend the following:

Navigate to Settings -> Performance -> Wallpaper Playback

• Other Application Fullscreen -> Pause or Kill
• Other Application Focused -> Pause
• Display Pause Rule(multiple screen system) -> All Display(s)
• Pause Algorithm -> Foreground Process

Also for Laptops:

• When on Battery power -> Pause or Kill

Pause algorithms

Lively implements several logic for pausing wallpaper:

Foreground Process

Current default, checks foreground program to determine wallpaper playback behaviour.

All Process

Checks all running programs to determine wallpaper playback behaviour.

Direct3D

Checks if a full-screen (exclusive mode) Direct3D application is running; none of the additional performance settings have any effect in this mode.

Note

The data collected is stored only in memory and never sent online.

Laptops/systems with multiple gpu?

Windows by default may use the igpu/weaker gpu instead of the main gpu.

If performance is too slow make sure to change the gpu in windows/driver control panel for the following programs:

• <install_location>/livelywpf.exe
• <install_location>/plugins/cef/LivelyCefSharp.exe
• <install_location>/plugins/mpv/mpv.exe

Desktop Window Manager(DWM) high cpu usage?

If you have multiple monitors, make sure they are all connected to the same gpu.

Disclaimer

Currently Application type wallpaper pausing is not implemented due to pending issues.