monoblog

Here is a step-by-step guide to setting Quartz Composer animations as a desktop background. For those unfamiliar with Quartz Composer, here is some information about it from Apple's website:

Quartz Composer brings together a rich set of graphical and nongraphical technologies, including Quartz 2D, Core Image, Core Video, OpenGL, QuickTime, MIDI System Services, and Real Simple Syndication (RSS), which is a lightweight XML format.

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Update: The freeware Quartz Desktop is a program that does the procedure listed below. The procedure below is left in case you want to see the manual steps involved.

Requirements for this procedure are:

• A Mac with OS X 10.4 ("Tiger")
• A few minutes of time
• Optional: Apple Xcode for developing your own Quartz Composer backgrounds

Step 1: Finding a suitable desktop background
To date, there are only a handful of Quartz Composer animations, as it is still in its infancy. This should change shortly, however. The best site I can recommend for now is that of Futurismo Zugakousaku, who has an excellent set of downloadable Quartz Composer files.

• Find a Quartz Composer file that you like and can download. Note: The file extension for Quartz Composer files is .QTZ -- Quicktime versions with extension .MOV will not work.
• Optional: Create your own Quartz Composer file (Here is a HOW-TO)
• Save the Quartz Composer file to your hard drive.

Step 2: Preparing the desktop background

• Copy the Quartz Composer file you want as a background to ~/Library/Screen Savers/. Note: If this folder does not exist, create it first.
• Click on the blue Apple in the upper right-hand corner of the screen and select "System Preferences"
• Click on "Desktop & Screen Saver"
• Choose the "Screen Saver" tab
• Under the list of screen savers, you should see the name of the Quartz Composer file you copied to ~/Library/Screen Savers/. Click on the name -- you should see the animation in the preview box.
• Close the System Preferences window.

Step 3: Setting up your desktop background
The fastest and easiest way to get the screen saver running as your background is to use Terminal (located under Applications/Utilities). If you do not want to run Terminal, you can try using xBack, a GUI-based program that accomplishes the steps below.

• Open Terminal.
• Copy and paste the following text into Terminal:

/System/Library/Frameworks/\
ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/\
ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/\
ScreenSaverEngine -background &

Note: The above step only allows you see the animated desktop background with Terminal running. If you want to be able to close Terminal and keep the animation running, use the following command:

nohup /System/Library/Frameworks/\
ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/\
ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/\
ScreenSaverEngine -background &

That's it! Please feel free to add suggestions or links to other Quartz Composer websites below. Here are some other relevant links you may find useful:

• HOW-TO for making your own Quartz Composer RSS screensaver
• Apple's Introduction to Quartz Composer Programming Guide
• Creating a Composition with Quartz Composer