DreamScene is (spiritually) back in Windows 11, letting you use videos as your desktop background — Latest Insider build finally returns coveted feature

Personalizing the computers we own — whether it’s a phone or a proper desktop — is one of life’s few simple comforts. It can bring you joy knowing that your favorite picture will greet you every morning when you start your day. Now, movements behind the Windows 11 development scene indicate that pictures could soon be exchanged for videos. Microsoft has finally added the option to use video files as desktop backgrounds in the latest Windows 11 Insider build, and it works seamlessly, as spotted by @phantomofearth on X.

As the tweet says, some of you may remember Windows DreamScene from back in the day. It was a built-in utility that allowed users to put videos as their wallpaper… up until Vista. Unfortunately, DreamScene was pulled from Windows 7 and never made a comeback officially. In the meantime, alternatives like the ever-so-popular Wallpaper Engine rose to fame and replaced DreamScene in the zeitgeist. Many modern gamers today may not even remember that dynamic desktop backgrounds used to be a native feature of the OS.

Fortunately, Microsoft is finally answering the community’s decades-long prayers and testing this feature. It’s available as part of the Windows 11 26×20.6690 Dev/Beta builds, for which you have to join the Windows Insider program. Once in, all you have to do is enable feature ID 57645315 and restart the explorer.exe process in Task Manager. After that, just open settings, and you should see .mp4, .m4v, .mkv, .mov, .wmv, .avi, and .webm in the list of supported file formats when you go to select a new wallpaper. Simply pick a video you want and you’re good to go.