Local Wally HUD
GitHub Repo

Local Wally HUD

Hardware-optimized ambient weather wallpaper and desktop dashboard for Windows 11 and Lively Wallpaper.

License: MIT Platform: Windows 11 / Lively Latest Release Zero Keys Required
🚀 Download Latest Release ⚡ Quick Install Guide 📖 Full Walkthrough
Local Wally HUD Desktop Overview showing live weather, hardware telemetry, 24-hour forecast, regional news, audio visualizer, and Pomodoro focus timer

✨ Why Local Wally?

Animated wallpapers can cause noticeable background battery drain or system stutter during intensive tasks.

Zero Configuration Out of the Box

Finds your local weather, solar times, and air quality automatically without accounts, API keys, or credit cards. Just install and run.

Designed to Minimize Idle Overhead

Halts animation loops and canvas drawing when idle, occluded, or when games and fullscreen applications are running. Smooth 60 FPS visual effects activate only during active precipitation, audio visualization, or user interaction.

Automatic Game and Screen Parking

When you maximize a window, launch a game, or lock your screen, Lively Wallpaper pauses playback. Local Wally immediately parks all animation loops and clears canvas draw buffers.

Weather-Adaptive Solar Lighting

Dynamic landscape photography matches your screen resolution and current weather, illuminated by real-time sun angles, warm golden hour glows, and gentle nocturnal moonlit ambiance with shifting card drop shadows.

OneDrive Personal Settings Sync & Any-Folder Backup

Syncs your HUD preferences, custom API keys, and wallpaper favorites across PCs via OAuth 2.0 Device Code Flow (microsoft.com/devicelogin) with native Lively Customise buttons and support for custom backup directories. Operates with a strict privacy firewall: zero location data or GPS coordinates ever enter the cloud.

Wallpaper Favorites & Avoidance

Curate your desktop background using the floating action bar. Save favorite wallpapers to an acrylic slide-out gallery, or mark images as "Less like this" to avoid them in future rotations with a 6-second undo toast.

Truthful Weather Provenance & Next Update Schedule

Transparent weather telemetry with relative age badges (Live · @ 9:25 AM, Cached, Stale, Fallback) and dynamic next update schedule countdowns (Next: 9:40 AM). Two-row relative card layout guarantees zero overlap between text and status pills.

🔑 Keyless Defaults vs. Keyed Providers

Local Wally functions completely out of the box with zero API keys. Commercial third-party keys are only required if you choose to activate a keyed provider:

Telemetry Type Default Provider (Zero Keys Needed) Optional Keyed Providers (Key Required if Selected)
Weather & Forecast Open-Meteo: High-precision global forecast models with zero configuration WeatherAPI.com (free key), OpenWeatherMap (account key)
Air Quality (AQI) Open-Meteo AQI: European AQI with PM2.5 and PM10 metrics WAQI / AQICN (personal token)
Wallpaper Photos Unsplash: Curated CDN photography matching live weather and resolution Wallhaven, Pexels, Pixabay (personal API keys)
Regional News Google News: Keyless regional RSS headlines via CORS proxy NewsAPI, Currents News (personal API keys)
Music & Focus Windows SMTC: Local Windows media transport controls + 32-bar visualizer None needed (100% local)
Hardware Health System Telemetry: CPU, GPU, RAM, Disk, Net Down/Up, Battery None needed (100% local)
Masked Credentials & Safe Fallback: All API key input fields in Lively Wallpaper are masked. If a keyed weather or air quality request fails, Local Wally falls back to Open-Meteo. Keyed wallpaper providers fall back to Unsplash, and keyed news providers fall back to Google News.

⚡ Quick Install Guide

Method 1: Drag-and-Drop Install (Recommended)

  1. Download local-wally.zip from the Latest GitHub Release.
  2. Open Lively Wallpaper and drag local-wally.zip straight into the Lively window.
  3. Click the newly added Local Wally HUD card in your library to activate it as your live wallpaper.

Method 2: Upgrading an Existing Installation

Lively Wallpaper keeps your customized values per wallpaper id. To upgrade without re-entering your settings:

⌨️ Verified Keyboard Shortcuts

When previewing in a browser or clicking the wallpaper on your desktop:

Key Action Behavior
D Diagnostics & Location Opens the diagnostic overlay (FPS, GPU info, cache status) and city search tool.
T Toggle Temp Unit Switches temperature display between Celsius (°C) and Fahrenheit (°F).
C Cycle Contrast Mode Cycles theme: Auto (Wallpaper-Adaptive) -> Dark Glass -> Light Glass.
M Cycle Demo Music Cycles demo audio tracks in preview mode (Synthwave -> Lo-Fi -> Ambient -> Idle).
P Pomodoro Start / Pause Starts or pauses the active Pomodoro focus countdown.
← / → Forecast Tabs Navigates between forecast metrics: Temp, Feels, Precip, Wind, Humidity, AQI.
Click / Enter Open Card Drawer Slides open the detailed contextual telemetry drawer for any card.
Esc Dismiss Drawer / Popover Closes any open detail drawer, hover popover, or location search dropdown.
Automatic Sync Cadence: Local Wally refreshes weather and wallpaper data on its configured interval (default 15 minutes). Regional news adheres to an independent 15-minute quota firewall per provider to protect rate limits.

🛡️ Safe Support & Troubleshooting

If you experience any issues, check the verified symptom table below or submit an issue on GitHub:

Privacy Notice: Never submit API keys, unredacted settings exports (.json), personal street addresses, home GPS coordinates, or credentials in public GitHub issues.
Problem Likely Cause Recommended Action
Stuck on "Locating..." WebView2 host permission query timed out Update to the latest release (which incorporates an automatic 1500 ms IP fallback race) or press D to enter a manual city.
Wrong city detected IP geolocation resolved your ISP gateway city Press D on your desktop, enter your desired city name or coordinates, and select it.
Weather or AQI shows "--" Network connectivity issue or provider error Check network access. Local Wally will retry automatically on the next 15-minute refresh cycle.
WeatherAPI / OpenWeatherMap fails Key missing, invalid, or expired Check your API key in Lively Settings. Local Wally automatically falls back to Open-Meteo.
News headlines not updating 15-minute rate limit quota firewall is active News providers enforce a 15-minute rate-limit window per provider. Wait for the window to elapse.
Clock frozen after PC sleep System resumed from S0 Modern Standby Update to the latest release. The clock resynchronizes immediately upon wake and network reconnect.
Visualizer runs during games Lively Wallpaper window pause setting disabled Verify that Lively Wallpaper is configured to pause when fullscreen applications are running.

For full walkthrough documentation and advanced settings, see the Complete Walkthrough Guide.

💻 System Requirements