Belter Charts as your desktop wallpaper

The map runs behind your desktop icons with the controls hidden. The camera moves to a new planet, moon or station every 9 seconds, and the clock is slowed so the planets turn at a speed you can watch. Everything loads from this site, so it needs an internet connection.

Wallpaper Engine (Windows, on Steam)

Download belter-charts-wallpaper.zip 22 KB

The zip has three files: project.json, a small index.html that opens this site in wallpaper mode, and a preview image.

1. Open Wallpaper Engine's folder. In Steam, right-click Wallpaper Engine in your Library and choose Manage > Browse local files. On a default install that folder is C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\wallpaper_engine.
2. Go into projects. If there's no myprojects folder in it, right-click an empty spot, choose New > Folder and name it myprojects.
3. Open myprojects, click the address bar at the top of the window and copy the path (Ctrl+C).
4. Right-click the downloaded zip and choose Extract All. Windows suggests a folder in Downloads. Replace it with the path you copied and add \belter-charts to the end, so it reads ...\projects\myprojects\belter-charts. Click Extract. Windows creates the belter-charts folder. If it asks for administrator permission, click Continue.
5. Check that project.json, index.html and preview.jpg are directly inside belter-charts. If they landed one folder deeper, move them up a level.
6. Restart Wallpaper Engine. Closing its window only hides it, so right-click its icon in the system tray, quit, and start it again from Steam. Belter Charts shows up in the Installed tab. Click it to apply it.
7. The panel on the right has the settings: glow, labels, ship traffic, seconds at each body and clock speed.

If it doesn't appear, open the Wallpaper Editor and drag the index.html file onto Create Wallpaper. The settings panel may be missing when you import it that way.

This setup is new and hasn't been tested on many machines yet. If it doesn't work for you, the feedback button on the main site reaches me.

Lively Wallpaper (Windows, free)

1. Click Add Wallpaper (the + button).
2. Paste https://belter-charts.pages.dev/?wallpaper=1 into the URL field and confirm.

Plash (macOS, free on the Mac App Store)

1. Choose Add Website from Plash's menu bar icon.
2. Paste https://belter-charts.pages.dev/?wallpaper=1 as the URL.

OBS (stream background)

Add a Browser source with the same URL and set its width and height to your canvas, for example 1920 × 1080.

Settings in the URL

Lively, Plash and OBS don't have a settings panel. Add any of these to the end of the URL instead, for example https://belter-charts.pages.dev/?wallpaper=1&labels=false&stopseconds=20.