I am not really a great fan of desktop background switching/rotating applications, but recently I found something that really caught my attention despite my dislike of these kind of applications. John’s Background Switcher is a great free desktop background switching utility.
There are plenty of features that sets it apart from other applications of this kind. It can not-only use images stored on you computer to rotate on your Windows desktop but also has extensive support of online image hosting/sharing services such as Flickr, Picasa, SmugMug, Yahoo and PhanFare. Application’s core functionality of switching backgrounds on the desktop is based on modes. There are total of seven modes supported by the application. Five modes for the online services that I mentioned above and one mode to select specific pictures to switch, and another mode where you will be able to select folders containing pictures that you want to switch on your desktop background. You can set any mode as the current mode and that will be used to rotate the wallpapers for your desktop.
This application supports many advanced features and some features and notes I have complied about this application are as follows:
- It has built-in multi-monitor support and you can set different options, such as if the same image will displayed on both the monitors or a different image for each one.
- Usual options such as the interval for the desktop wallpaper switching, image border and multi-monitor configuration can be set for every mode.
- For the Pictures mode it supports the creation of multiple sets.
- You can set the way pictures will be displayed on the desktop such as stretch, center, tile, scale and over-stretch.
- Also supports the advanced(composite) modes for the desktop background such as Mosaic, Montage or a Scrapbook of the pictures. This is supported for all the modes except the Pictures mode.
- Support for online photo services is pretty extensive for example when using Flickr you can:
- Select images from everybody, from a specific person, from a specific pool or from a specific time period etc.
- Multiple photo-sets can be chosen and the above mentioned options can be set for each of the photo sets.
- Set the option to choose the most interesting images only.
- Save all downloaded photos.
- Ignore photos with specific tags.
- You can display your private images (authorization required for Flickr and Picasa).
- Use the largest available image size.
- Can show a desktop calendar.
- Can be forced to use only the pictures that are in landscape mode.
- Display pictures greater than a specific resolution.
- Apply image effects to the images in real time such as grayscale, sepia etc.
- Can auto rotate the pictures based on the EXIF information.
- Stop switching pictures when a screen-saver is running.
- Only switch the background if the system is in idle mode.
- Stop switching backgrounds if a specific application is running.
- Run a specific program after switching the background.
- Import and export all the configuration settings from with in the program.
- An image browser is provided to view all the images downloaded and saved to show as the desktop background from the Flickr for example.
- And numerous other options that I will leave for you to explore!
John’s Back Ground Switcher is undoubtedly the most powerful desktop switching application available for Windows, and yet it is for free for personal use. You can download this powerful desktop switcher from the official website.
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