Have you been looking for an easy way to get the National Geographic photo of the day as your desktop wallpaper on Ubuntu?
Well, look no further than the following nifty little app made by the (wonderful) folks over at Spanish blog Atareao.
It’s called ‘National Geographic Wallpaper‘ and, as you might have guessed from the name, its sole aim to download the latest wallpaper of the day from the National Geographic website and set it as your desktop wallpaper.
Nothing more, nothing less.
The “app” (it’s more of a background script than anything) is intentionally designed to stay out of your way. If you want a full-bodied wallpaper manager with all sorts of options and sources you’re better off using one as this isn’t trying to cater to that niche.
Instead the focus is on simplicity. And it works. The app offers a simple way to get a stunning, high-quality wallpaper each and every day without needing to set up sources, select options, or take to the web.
Install ‘National Geographic Wallpaper’ App on Ubuntu
To install the National Geographic Wallpaper app on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and above you can download the following installer:
Once it has fully downloaded you just need to double-click on it to install it using Ubuntu Software.
To get new updates to this app as they are released you can add the Atareao PPA (which does contain other apps, so be careful) to your software sources. Just run these two commands in a new Terminal window to add the PPA and install the app:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:atareao/atareao
sudo apt update && sudo apt install national-geographic-wallpaper
Set up
Once the app is fully installed you can set it up. Open the Unity Dash (or an equivalent application launcher) to search for and launch the app. Once open you’ll see a small toggle switch. Slide the toggle from off to on to allow the app to change the wallpaper automatically.
Nothing will happen once you flick this switch; the app is not broken. Instead, you need to log out and back in for the app to “do its thing”.
From now on it will automatically change the wallpaper once a day, on schedule.