Wallpaper Master: Beautify your wallpaper

Wallpaper Master is a program to automatically switch your wallpaper, much like Wallpaperer. However, besides their purpose, the two programs have very little in common. Wallmaster (as I call it) has many more features than Wallpaperer, even if it does have a slight bit more bulk. But it's still light enough to run without notice. Here's some of the things that won me over for Wallmaster:

-Categories: I have to admit, this was something I longed for when I used Wallpaperer. Sometimes, you're in the mood for scenic wallpaper. Others, maybe your favorite bands. With Wallpaperer, you have too edit multiple INI files, then go in and rename them, and it's a very large hassel, but Wallmaster has a very easy menu where you can add, rename, and delete categories.

-Monitor Directory: Yes. You can make Wallmaster check for new wallpapers every time it starts. You can also make it scan subdirectories as well.

-Preview: It does indeed show a preview of whatever wallpaper you've selected.

-Context options: It has alot of "Misc" options, such as "Copy to category...", "Move to category...", "View in default viewer", "Open in Explorer", "Remove missing links", and several more, every option as useful as the next. You can even rename a file right inside Wallmaster.

-Change on Startup: Useful feature, if you want it. You can also make it "Auto-close after 30 seconds", if you wanted to use Wallmaster to just change the wallpaper once when the computer starts.

-Change every...: The key feature, for me at least. Let's you set the number of minutes until Wallmaster changes. It even displays the remaining minutes on another part of the window, in case you're curious. But what really takes the cake for me is the "Use Ratings" option because Wallmaster has...

-Ratings: My favorite feature. Wallmaster takes wallpapers to the next level, where you can rate each wallpaper individual, 1 through 5. The purpose of this is when you click the "Use Ratings" option, Wallmaster will adjust the time by how high or low a wallpaper is rated. For example, say you specified 10 minutes. A wallpaper with a rating of 1 will change in 5 minutes, a rating of 3 will change in 10, and a rating of 5 will change in 20.

The main reason I like ratings is because I see wallpapers that I like more often. But then, if you're not into that kind of thing, you just switch it off.

-Order: You can again use ratings to adjust how Wallmaster picks the order, or you can make it do "No repeats", or you can make it simply stop at the top of the list and work its way down to the bottom.

That's it for the major functions. Here's some other little things that help make Wallmaster freakin amazing:

-Backgroundcolor: You can select the Background color from inside Wallmaster, or you can make it Autoselect. In case you didn't know, Background Color is the background behind the text on the shortcuts. (If you don't know what I mean, try changing it, and you'll see.) Wallmaster can autochange it, based on the wallpaper, to make you desktop look good. Another program that does this is Iconoid.

-Position: Wallmaster has a bunch of position settings. You can set a default position setting, AND can set it individually for each file, meaning you can set one for resize, one for tile, one for stretch, etc.

-Start with Startup: Practically required, for me.

-Hotkeys: If you're into it, you can set autokeys to mirror, delete, pause, and many more options.

-Separate User Settings: You can make it either do separate user settings, or global.

-Idle Time: You can make it ignore "idle time" for the timer, if you don't want you comp to rotate wallpapers while you're not there.

-Tray icon: The tray icon is amazing. You can do alot of the above stuff just by the tray menu. The thing I like about it is that you can set it where a left click on the tray icon will change the wallpaper to the next in lineup, so you can very quickly proceed with your lineup, if you don't like the current wallpaper.

-Portable?: Still not sure about that.

Wallpaper Master is my favorite app for handling my wallpapers. If Wallpaperer is too simple for you, try Wallpaper Master. It's very advanced, yet the interface is very easy on the eyes and easy to use. There is a Wallpaper Master Pro that is shareware, but the feature list on the free version is more than enough for me.

*I did make the icon at the top based on the program's icon, so if you use it somewhere else, please let me know....and give credit where credit is due.

Visit Wallpaper (James Gart) Website for Download