HourGlow
Lake Tahoe at sunrise Lake Tahoe in daylight Lake Tahoe at dusk Lake Tahoe at night under stars

Your wallpaper,
on the sun's schedule.

macOS Tahoe has a wallpaper for every part of the day, and no way to switch them. HourGlow does it for you.

Download for macOS 26 Free · Open source · 5 MB · Easy on the battery
  1. 06:04Morningsunrise
  2. 08:04Daysunrise +2 h
  3. 18:06Eveningsunset −30 min
  4. 19:36Nightsunset +1 h

One panel in the menu bar. No Dock icon, no window.

The timeline: today's slots with their resolved times.
Today at a glance. Add as many slots as you like.
A slot editor with Clock, Sunrise and Sunset triggers.
A fixed time, or sunrise and sunset with an offset.
The wallpaper picker showing system aerials.
All 156 system aerials, or any image on disk.

Set it once. Forget it.

  • Follows the seasonsSun times are computed on your Mac. No network, no account.
  • Light on the batteryNo polling, no background loop. It wakes once at the next switch, then sleeps.
  • Won't fight youPick a wallpaper yourself and it stays until the next switch.
  • 24-hour wallpaper setsDrop in a folder of stills. They spread across the day by sun time.
  • Nothing until you press ApplyEdits are a draft. Try things freely.
  • TinyUnder 5 MB, zero third-party code, and it catches up after sleep.

Install in a minute.

Not notarized, so macOS asks once. Then it just runs.

  1. Download, unzip, drag to Applications.
  2. Let it through once. 
    $ xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/HourGlow.app
  3. Open it.

    The Tahoe schedule is already set up.

Also a command line.

Same engine, headless.

$ hourglow-cli now
$ hourglow-cli simulate 2026-12-21
$ hourglow-cli import ~/Pictures/zhangjiajie
$ hourglow-cli agent install

Let the day change your desktop.

Download HourGlow

macOS 26 Tahoe or later · English and 简体中文