Your desktop,
in full bloom.
Any video becomes your live wallpaper. It pauses on battery power and when your desktop isn't visible, so it stays light on CPU and RAM.
↑ switches this page's wallpaper, live · and try clicking anywhere
184 MB with a 1080p loop.
Here's the whole table.
Other wallpaper apps ship their own copy of Chromium. Bloom uses the webview already on your machine, which is why the installer is 2 MB instead of 200. Running, it costs what a webview costs — and nothing at all once your desktop is covered.
| Process name | Memory pressure | Memory | % CPU hidden |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wallpaper EngineWindows · ships its own Chromium | 450–900 MB | > 0 | |
| Lively WallpaperWindows · lightest big-name option | 120–280 MB | > 0 | |
| bloommacOS · desktop covered | 52 MBresident | 0.0 | |
| bloommacOS · built-in garden scene | 171 MB | > 0 | |
| bloommacOS · 1080p video | 184 MB | > 0 | |
| bloommacOS · 4K video | 308 MB | > 0 | |
| bloomWindows · WebView2 | measuring… | — |
These are measurements, not marketing — M1 MacBook Air, July 2026, desktop visible, summed across all four processes Bloom runs (the app plus the three WebKit services that do the actual rendering). Measured with phys_footprint, the same number Activity Monitor shows you.
We had these wrong until v0.4.1. Earlier versions of this page claimed 39 MB for 1080p. That figure counted only the main bloom process and missed the WebKit processes entirely — which are the larger part. The real number is about 4.7× higher, and it's in the table above. The measuring script is in the repo; run it yourself.
The comparison rows are Windows apps. Wallpaper Engine and Lively don't ship for macOS, so they can't be measured on the same machine as the rows below them. Treat them as context for what a bundled-Chromium wallpaper app costs, not as a like-for-like benchmark. Bloom's own Windows numbers aren't measured yet — that row stays empty until they are.
About the "desktop covered" row. That one is resident memory, not footprint, because it's the only row where the two diverge sharply. Cover the desktop and macOS stops Bloom rendering — CPU 0.0%, verified — and compresses its pages down to 52 MB actually held in RAM. Activity Monitor will still show around 308 MB for it, because that column counts compressed pages too. Both numbers are true; the 52 MB is the one that's costing you something.
Small app.
Big petals.
Fair questions,
straight answers.
Plant it.
v0.4 beta — free, for macOS, Windows and Linux. Linux is experimental. Tell us what breaks.