Install Motion

Motion runs on Linux and Windows. Motion for Android, with an app for Wear OS watches that sends sensor readings to your wallpapers, is coming soon to Google Play. Here's how to get Motion onto each system, how it starts, and what you need.

7 min readMotion

Before you start

A GPU with Vulkan. Intel, AMD and NVIDIA all work. Motion is built to be light on integrated graphics.
Motion itself, from Steam or direct (see Get Motion); on Android, from Google Play once it's out. The Steam copy needs only Steam. Motion bought direct asks you to sign in to Motion Hub once, so they know you own it (see Signing in below); wallpapers you already have play either way.

From Steam

Bought Motion on Steam? Find Motion in your Steam library and press Install. Steam keeps it up to date, and you open Motion Player and Motion Studio from Steam or from your app menu. Then read on for your system: what's below about each desktop, Windows' tray and signing in is the same for the Steam copy. On the Steam Deck, wallpapers are for Desktop Mode.

Linux

Debian, Ubuntu and anything built on them

Once you own Motion, download Motion Player, motion-player_0.4_amd64.deb, from Get Motion on Motion Hub (sign in first), and install it:

sudo apt install ./motion-player_0.4_amd64.deb

Motion Studio, the editor, is a second package, motion-studio_0.4_amd64.deb, from the same place. Install it the same way if you want to make scenes of your own:

sudo apt install ./motion-studio_0.4_amd64.deb

Install motion-input_0.4_amd64.deb too, from the same place and the same way, if you want scenes to move to music, or, on Plasma, to follow your mouse pointer and answer clicks on the desktop.

You get Motion Player in your app menu, which picks your wallpapers, and with Studio installed, Motion Studio, which makes them.

Ubuntu and Debian have an unrelated program also called motion (a security camera server). Motion's packages are motion-player, motion-studio and motion-input, so sudo apt install motion never gets you Motion. Motion's command in a terminal is motion-cli, so the two can be installed side by side.

KDE Plasma

Open Motion Player from the app menu and pick a scene. Motion switches the desktop to its own wallpaper for you.

You can also do it from Plasma: right-click the desktop, choose Configure Desktop and Wallpaper, and pick Motion as the wallpaper type. The settings Plasma shows there are the same ones as in Motion Player's Settings; change them in either.

On Plasma, Motion starts with Plasma itself. There's nothing to turn on.

GNOME

Motion Player comes with an extension for GNOME. Turn it on once:

On GNOME on Wayland, sign out and back in after installing, so GNOME sees the new extension.
Turn on Motion's extension in the Extensions app, or with the command below.
Open Motion Player and pick a scene.

gnome-extensions enable [email protected]

The extension keeps the wallpaper behind everything, out of Alt+Tab and the overview, and tells Motion when a window covers a screen so it can pause.

To have the wallpaper come back after a reboot, turn on Start Motion when you sign in in Settings.

Sway, Hyprland, river, labwc, Wayfire, niri, Xfce, i3, Cinnamon and the rest

Open Motion Player from your app menu and pick a scene. It starts the wallpaper behind your windows for you.

Turn on Start Motion when you sign in in Settings so it comes back after a reboot.

Steam Deck and other distributions

The .deb packages are for Debian, Ubuntu and the distributions built on them. There's no package of Motion's own for Fedora, Arch and other distributions yet: on those, and on the Steam Deck, get Motion from Steam.

Windows

Once you own Motion, download the installer, Motion-Setup-0.4.exe, from Get Motion on Motion Hub (sign in first). It's for Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit.

Run it. It installs for you only and doesn't ask for admin. The installer isn't signed yet, so Windows shows a "Windows protected your PC" screen when you run it: choose More info, then Run anyway.

The installer asks about two extras:

Start with Windows plays your wallpaper whenever you sign in. You can change this later in Settings.
Desktop shortcut for Studio puts Motion Studio on your desktop.

You get Motion Player and Motion Studio in the Start menu.

The tray

The wallpaper lives in the tray, by the clock. Click Motion's icon and a small panel opens with:

what each screen is playing, with a button for the Next scene
Pause all (or Play all when it's paused)
Quick settings: frame rate, what to do on battery, Hear what's playing, and Pause a screen when a window covers it
Open Motion Player and All settings…

Right-click the icon for a menu with the same things and a few more: Open Studio, a Scene list to pick from, Sharpness, how screens share scenes, Start with Windows, and Quit.

On Windows, Motion rests while a window covers a screen, while a game or a presentation runs full screen, while the PC is locked, and in battery saver.

To uninstall, use Apps in Windows Settings, where it's listed as Motion Player. Your own scenes, in %LOCALAPPDATA%\motion, stay.

Android

Motion for Android is coming soon to Google Play. It isn't out yet: it comes after the desktop, and Get Motion links to it once it is. It needs Android 8 or newer, and a phone with Vulkan 1.1 (almost anything from the last few years).

Once it's out, it's free to try with the scenes it comes with. For your own scenes, videos and pictures, and for downloads from Motion Hub, buy Motion Full in the app, or sign in to the app with the Motion Hub account you bought Motion with on Steam or direct.

Open Motion Player. You see the scenes it came with. Tap one, then Use as wallpaper, and Android's own live wallpaper screen confirms it. When Motion is already your wallpaper the bar at the bottom says ✓ Playing on your wallpaper, with Change in system beside it.

Add a scene adds a .motion file or a .zip exported from Studio, a picture or a video. Long-press one of yours to remove it.
Settings, at the top, has Playback: the graphics, frames a second, quality, what to do in battery saver and when not charging, touch, music and the language. It also has a Sensors row, whose Open Sensors holds the Motion Hub tokens your scenes read from (see The Sensors page).

Motion draws only while your home screen shows. It stops while you're in an app or the screen is off, and pauses in battery saver unless you change In battery saver.

Motion Studio on Android

Motion Studio for Android is coming soon to Google Play, in a listing of its own. It needs Android 9 or newer on a 64-bit phone or tablet. Like Studio on a computer, it opens once you sign in with a Motion Hub account that owns Motion.

Held upright on a phone, the layers and the settings open from the buttons at the top, and the ⋯ menu has saving, publishing and the rest. Use as wallpaper hands the scene to Motion on the same phone, so install that too.

Wear OS watch

The Motion watch app sends your heart rate, steps, wrist movement and battery to scenes that read them. It's coming soon to Google Play: free, for Wear OS 3 or newer, in the same listing as Motion for Android. Once it's out, install it from the Play Store on the watch, or pick your watch on Motion's Google Play page on your phone.

Then give it a token from your phone: The watch on the Sensors page says how.

Signing in

Motion uses your Motion Hub account for wallpapers from the Hub, for sharing, and for sensors, and Motion bought direct uses it to know you own Motion. To sign in, use Sign in on Motion Player's Motion Hub page (in Studio, on the Publish page or with Ctrl+K). Signing in happens in your browser:

Choose Sign in with Discord, Sign in with Steam or Sign in with email. The last opens Motion Hub's own sign-in page, where Google is offered too.
Motion Hub opens in your browser. Check it shows the same code as the Motion window, then approve it.
The Motion window goes on by itself.

If you closed the browser tab, press Open the page again. No account yet? You can make one on the same page. Not now closes it. If you sign this computer out on the Hub's website, Motion is signed out too, and carries on without the Hub.

After installing

The first time Motion Player opens, it walks you through a few short steps: Pick a scene, Where it shows (with more than one screen) and How it behaves. Nothing changes on your desktop until the last step, and Skip for now leaves everything as it was. After that, Pick a wallpaper is the quick tour.

Checking a download

Get Motion on Motion Hub shows each download's SHA-256 under its buttons. To check a file, work out its own and compare. On Windows, in PowerShell:

Get-FileHash .\Motion-Setup-0.4.exe

On Linux:

sha256sum motion-player_0.4_amd64.deb motion-studio_0.4_amd64.deb

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Last changed 2 November 2026. Something wrong here? Tell us.