WinSpotlightGNOME

A utility for automatically downloading the Bing photo of the day, and setting it as your desktop background in GNOME. The name comes from the fact that this utility originally downloaded Windows Spotlight images, however the API for that service is private, and the endpoint appears to have changed, so unfortunately it is no longer possible for me to fetch images from that source.

This project is specifically for Linux systems using systemd and running GNOME, such as Ubuntu, Manjaro GNOME, or Fedora Workstation. However, with a little work, it could easily be modified to work with other desktop environments, or with an alternative to systemd timers such as cron.

Download

Ubuntu/Debian

Installation

Using the Debian Package (Recommended)

If you’re on Debian, Ubuntu, or any of their derivates, you can use the provided Debian package to install the utility:

1. Download the .deb file using the button above.
2. Open a terminal in the folder the file was downloaded to.
3. Run the following commands:

sudo apt install ./filename.deb
systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user enable winspotlightgnome.timer
systemctl --user start winspotlightgnome.timer

Replacing filename.deb with the name of the file that you downloaded.

Installing Manually

Dependencies

• Bash or Zsh (may work with other shells, but this is untested).
• cURL
• Jq

1. Clone or download the utility’s Git repo (requires Git to be installed):

    git clone https://github.com/ryangwsimmons/WinSpotlightGNOME.git
   

2. Open a terminal and cd into the repo folder that you downloaded.
3. Make the winspotlightgnome script executable:

    chmod +x winspotlightgnome
   

4. Copy the winspotlightgnome script to the opt folder on your system:

    sudo cp winspotlightgnome /opt/
   

5. Copy the WinSpotlightGNOME .service and .timer files to the systemd user unit directory:

    sudo cp winspotlightgnome.service winspotlightgnome.timer /usr/lib/systemd/user/
   

6. Reload the systemd user daemon:

    systemctl --user daemon-reload
   

7. Enable and start the WinSpotlightgnome systemd timer

    systemctl --user enable winspotlightgnome.timer
    systemctl --user start winspotlightgnome.timer
   

Configuration

The following options can be changed by modifying the winspotlightgnome script, changing the various variables at the top of the file:

locale

An option sent to the Bing API to determine which photos are downloaded. If desired, you should change this to your current locale (i.e. en-US, en-CA, etc.).

imgPath

The path where images downloaded by the utility will be stored.

deleteImagesAfterNumDays

When the utility runs, all images as old or older than the number of days specified here will be deleted from the directory specified previously. If the value specified is less than or equal to 0, images will be preserved indefinitely.

setDesktop

If set to yes, the desktop background will be changed when the utility downloads a new image.

Updates

To update the utility:

If you installed using the Debian package, just install the updated Debian package using the same procedure outlined above.

If you installed manually, replace all of the files that have changed since the last version (or just replace them all, much easier) and run the following commands:

systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user reenable winspotlightgnome.timer