Is there a permanent folder for official wallpapers?

fusion809 · January 17, 2025, 2:47pm

I have been running NixOS 24.11 in a virtual machine with the GNOME desktop and I’ve been trying to customize GNOME a little, including its wallpapers. I have set my windows to use dark mode, and this has caused my wallpaper to change to nix-wallpaper-simple-dark-gray.png. I want to set it back to nix-wallpaper-simple-blue.png. Using find I have found folders in /nix/store for these files, but I was hoping there’d be a permanent location for it somewhere else in my system. I have checked /run/current-system/sw/share/backgrounds and /run/current-system/sw/share/wallpapers and neither contain these wallpapers.

Is there a permanent folder in my NixOS file system with symlinks for NixOS’ official wallpapers like nix-wallpaper-simple-blue.png?

waffle8946 · January 17, 2025, 2:55pm

If you’re writing nix config for it, pkgs.nixos-artwork.wallpapers.<name>.gnomeFilePath where <name> is one of the attributes listed in the file below:

github.com

NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/331d32a6745de3f01a8c55647774a2c58efb81ad/pkgs/data/misc/nixos-artwork/wallpapers.nix

{
  lib,
  stdenv,
  fetchurl,
}:

let
  mkNixBackground =
    {
      name,
      src,
      description,
      license ? lib.licenses.free,
    }:

    let
      pkg = stdenv.mkDerivation {
        inherit name src;

        dontUnpack = true;

This file has been truncated. show original

But if you’re configuring via UI, it should be in /run/current-system/sw/share/backgrounds/nixos/.

fusion809 · January 17, 2025, 3:22pm

Interesting. Should it be in /run/current-system/sw/share/backgrounds/nixos only after pkgs.nixos-artwork.wallpapers.<name>.gnomeFilePath has been set? If not, then I have some unfortunate news for you, that folder does not exist on my NixOS 24.11 system.

waffle8946 · January 17, 2025, 3:37pm

Adding pkgs.nixos-artwork.wallpapers.<name> to environment.systemPackages and

environment.pathsToLink = [ "/share/backgrounds/nixos" ];

should suffice.

Thought I thought it was a bit odd that the gnome module doesn’t take care of something like this already, and found this:

github.com

NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/c53498a79f86f76eae0203c673f6b6afa3cb3a30/nixos/modules/services/x11/desktop-managers/gnome.nix#L45-L63


      
          nixos-background-info = pkgs.writeTextFile rec {
            name = "nixos-background-info";
            text = ''
              <?xml version="1.0"?>
              <!DOCTYPE wallpapers SYSTEM "gnome-wp-list.dtd">
              <wallpapers>
                <wallpaper deleted="false">
                  <name>Blobs</name>
                  <filename>${nixos-background-light.gnomeFilePath}</filename>
                  <filename-dark>${nixos-background-dark.gnomeFilePath}</filename-dark>
                  <options>zoom</options>
                  <shade_type>solid</shade_type>
                  <pcolor>#3a4ba0</pcolor>
                  <scolor>#2f302f</scolor>
                </wallpaper>
              </wallpapers>
            '';
            destination = "/share/gnome-background-properties/nixos.xml";
          };

Perhaps this is already making said default wallpapers visible to gnome apps, but I don’t use gnome so I don’t know how this operates.

fusion809 · January 17, 2025, 4:00pm

Thank you. That fixed things for me.