Driftpane

Live 3D wallpaper for your Mac, drawn in real time behind your desktop icons

A live 3D scene on your desktop, drawn in real time with Metal just behind your icons, on every display and every Space. Not a video loop: the light follows the real time of day, and some scenes follow your real weather. It lives in the menu bar and pauses when the desktop is covered, the screen is locked, or you’re on battery.

$14.99 Buy now Download free

Free to use without a key: Deep Reef, a coral reef with schools of fish, sunbeams and caustics, the light of the real hour and glowing plankton at night.

Buy a license key to unlock Pro: ten more scenes, Fairytale Castle, Rainy Window Café, Alpine Lake, Northern Lights Cabin, Earth from Orbit, Zen Koi Pond, Neon City Rain, Nebula Flythrough, Tropical Beach Sunset and Cozy Fireplace Library.

macOS 14 Sonoma or later, on a Mac with Apple silicon (M1 or later) · Version 0.3.1 · 8.7 MB disk image · Notarized by Apple

One-time $14.99 for Pro: ten more scenes. No subscription. One license key works on up to 3 of your Macs.

Download: The download (a signed, notarized .dmg) comes with your purchase in your Gumroad receipt, together with your license key. Updates install from inside the app.

Buy now opens Gumroad's checkout on this page; Gumroad is the seller and handles payment, sales tax and your receipt.

Deep Reef, the free scene: a coral reef with schools of tropical fish and sunlight rippling on the sand

Features

11 scenes: Deep Reef free, ten more with Pro
Fairytale Castle: a lantern-lit castle over a misty lake, the moon in tonight’s real phase, fireworks now and then (or off)
Rainy Window Café: drops cling, merge and run down the glass; heavier when it really rains where you are
Alpine Lake: peaks, pines and a mirror lake under your real sky, with clouds, rain, snow and fog
Earth from Orbit with NASA imagery, lit where the sun really is right now
Pick a scene from thumbnails in the menu bar, or Shuffle Daily for a different one each day
Pauses when the desktop is covered, the screen is locked or asleep, and on battery unless you choose Run on Battery
Auto quality for 4K and 5K displays, and lower frame rates when the Mac runs hot
Optional idle scene: after a few minutes without input, the scene fills the screen until you move the mouse

Fairytale Castle: a lit castle on a crag over a lake at night, fireworks bursting beside it and reflected in the water

Alpine Lake: snowy peaks and a pine forest mirrored in a still lake under a blue sky

Rainy Window Café: raindrops on a window over the blurred lights of a city street at night

Nine Pro scenes in a grid: a northern lights cabin, Earth from orbit, a koi pond, a neon street in the rain, a nebula, a beach sunset, a fireside library, the castle and the rainy café

Requirements

macOS 14 Sonoma or later, on a Mac with Apple silicon (M1 or later). Earth from Orbit uses NASA’s Blue Marble and Black Marble imagery (NASA Earth Observatory). Current version: 0.3.1.

Privacy

No account and no analytics. The real weather is optional: type a city or ZIP code, or turn on “Use my location” (rounded to about a kilometer and used only on your Mac). The forecast comes from MET Norway (api.met.no, CC BY 4.0), at most once an hour while a weather scene shows. The only network requests are the license check with Gumroad, checking for updates, the weather forecast and Apple’s place lookup when you type a place.

Driftpane privacy policy Help and support

Questions about your purchase or license key? Reply to your Gumroad receipt or contact us.