23. 2026-10-22 / index

You should have three desktop wallpapers.

Well, maybe not three. This is not an article about optimizing productivity or comfort or ease of use or any of that. Only you can find out how many wallpapers is right for you, and you can follow along other people's tried and true practices or just FAFO for yourself. But, in my opinion, the right number is probably more than one.

Wallpapers are desktop pictures. Desktop pictures are the thing you put in the background of your desktop workspace. I'm predicating this article on the assumption you already agree that your life is better when you aren't using your apps in full screen. I upgraded from a 13" MacBook Air to a 15" one because I wanted more space. I could have gotten it by putting my apps in full screen, split view, even the two-thirds-hearted tiling view Sequoia introduced, but no. I like my windows this way. This way is not full screen.

(So no, a "desktop workspace" doesn't mean a standing tower, desktop computer. It doesn't mean an immobile real-world workspace. As you'll see in a moment half my reasoning is steeped on the idea that you do bring your laptop, i.e. your projects, with you. I'll make the case, though, that I'm not talking about phone wallpapers, and not tablet wallpapers either. This is about work. This is about doing things. Ahem:)

Wallpapers are the backdrop to getting things done. Wallpapers are exciting. They're not the blueprint before you put that first sketch down, but they are the crafts table underneath. Wallpapers are the stuff cluttering your room that will sit beside you the whole time you're zoned in, the stuff you will not be thinking, oh, I ought to take a break, I ought to clean this up now. Wallpapers give your workspace space. Wallpapers keep you tethered to this world... just enough to get lost, to let all but completely go. Wallpapers keep it real, so that you can have fun.

Wallpapers, I'll say, are the closest digital analogue to real-world rooms. Using a different device for the week is like driving a different car for the week - I don't drive, so I'll pass. Swapping web browsers or messing with your text editor's syntax highlighting, that's like switching out your kit, this tool or that. It'll feel different and maybe better. (Maybe.) Just fiddling with settings amounts to sharpening your pencil. Probably worth its while, but don't snap the fresh edge.

Wallpapers, contrasting all of those, are not part of the foreground. They are literally the furthest into the background you can get, within the confines of the (visual) computer. The bevel of my MacBook are the structural beams; the wallpaper is everything between. Oh, you get the memo, already.

So why three of them? Why more than one?

It's about getting out of your head. It's also about getting into your head. Speaking for myself I switch wallpapers strictly "once in a while". The boundaries are fickle, slightly fleeting, but I'll attempt to identify a few.

I keep two or three projects sort of on the go at once. It's just not right to only have one. I'll burn myself out if it's the same work in and out each and every (working) day; I need the opportunity to deflate the prominence one project holds in my life, and then give some of that time or energy into another. Accordingly if I'm feeling a slump in motivation then it's a very good sign it's time to take a step back. Mostly that means a day or two leaving my laptop shut, frankly. When I come back, the old wallpaper is strikingly wrong. It is no longer the vibes. I am coming in fresh, and I'll bring some new air with, thank you. (I expect some people will find syntax highlighting serves a similar role, returning to a project. Oh, I mean, assuming you do write code. My condolences if your exposure to code is strictly half-assed review on GitHub.com. I don't think you can change the syntax highlighting there. Which coding agent is popular now? Why do I even know the phrase "coding agent"? I hope that's out of date. Sorry, sorry. Syntax highlighting is just a bit like brand of drawing pencils: it is to little effect. When I'm looking for a change, I'd rather prop myself on a couch instead of in bed, or at the kitchen instead of on a couch, or in bed instead of at the kitchen. Changing syntax highlighting on a whim is about as annoying as changing a lightbulb... on a whim. You may note my syntax highlighting is mostly grey.) Switching wallpapers emblemizes a tune-up for my entire working mindset. I'm sure there's something meaningfully psychological here; on different grounds I make different decisions, and of course I'm at least half aware of this, so I'm ready for it. I'm more accepting to try something else. I am, if my heart so desires, "okay" with putting down this one project, and taking up another.

Likewise switching wallpapers helps me function as a system. I've little helped that most our hobbies are on a computer; that's how it's always been, and at least I like it more than my phone. (Bit of a blessing we cracked the screen there, recently.) But consequently this is a shared device, no matter that it's "only us" meaningfully using it. "Us" is still the first-person plural. Getting in a right and royal groove we'll find we don't switch wallpaper for days or even weeks, and I have a humble/divine hunch, that this correlates with a slack in fronting diversity. Not frontstuckedness, no, but something sort of close. By all means every system is different, but ours operates better with a good and rotating array of who's in charge, who's most expressly tasting the day. So it really pains me to just forget I have three wallpapers. Flexibility in the working environment is about as important as keeping a fresh and varied wardrobe. We love doing stuff, and it will never feel right if we can't even get embodied. The last thing we need is for our desktop to feel hostile to us, just because that's where Lanolin works—not me. (Sorry, freaking out for a minute. Em dash is &mdash? What? It's not &em? OK. Ouch. Moving on.) But we'd rather frame this beneficially, too. It's just the effects are almost the same as annotated above. Swapping wallpapers opens ourselves to thinking differently; opens ourselves to enjoying what comes spuriously to mind, taking those thoughts just seriously enough, getting quickly into a new groove, and maybe a groove not quite so deep as before. In fact all these aids come just as well from taking a walk outside, too. I can't recommend that strongly enough. Touch grass before adding two more wallpapers, alright?

You may note we have not drawn or insinuated any hard associations between particular wallpapers and, say, particular projects, or particular fronting system members. Our life is too fluid for that, even as broad-stroke constants remain, well, constant. But still we've toyed with these ideas, earlier, anyway. It's cute that you can assign an app to a specific space. We don't like tiling workspaces, but clearly any Linux offers options and window-placement memory is fun. We've mused from time to time on automating a system customizations, spread across plenty of devices - swapping wallpapers for sure - with a simple gesture on bedside phone, or even some hardware switch. But we never see those ideas through. The fact is our opinions of ourselves, our preferences and customs, change almost as often as we change front, to begin with. What holds true, almost sort of still, are facts truly encompassing-broad, and nuances ever so deep and numerous. Neither of those we can hope to grasp firm, in the tangible aspects of day-to-day motion. That medium is... um... what's it... right for the space in-between, an identity's medium zone so to speak, and that zone is ever-changing. To bind it to front or to project or to much of anything modally else - no, thanks.

We keep three wallpapers and let the physical act, swapping between them, be just as fluid. Four fingers swipe left or right. The slightest tedium in Mission Control, and there we presently are. We enjoy to keep it simple.

Our current wallpapers: Andromeda Galaxy, Wave, The many faces of you. We only learned the last one's proper title now. Ah, it's nice.