Setting up CyberAquarium as a living wallpaper

Wallpaper mode is the way most people run CyberAquarium: the tank sits behind your icons, the fish react to the cursor, and the whole thing disappears when you open a game. This guide covers the setup that avoids the usual problems.

1. Install, then pick a tank

Run the installer and launch the app. On first start you get the free tank — a finished scene with three Ranchu varieties. You do not need an account.

Choose Wallpaper mode from the mode switcher. The window will move behind your desktop icons; if it does not, check that the app is allowed to run at startup (Settings → Apps → Startup).

2. Let it get out of the way

Two settings do most of the work:

• Pause on fullscreen — when an application goes fullscreen (a game, a video player, a slide deck), the renderer stops. This is on by default.
• Pause when hidden — when the desktop is covered by a maximised window, rendering drops to a very low rate. This is what keeps a laptop cool.

If you use multiple monitors, set which display the tank lives on in Settings → Display. The app remembers the choice per monitor layout, so docking and undocking a laptop will not move the fish to the wrong screen.

3. Make it look right

Three small things make the biggest difference:

1. Match the scene to your wallpaper brightness. Dark scenes read better on dark desktops; bright scenes wash out white icons.
2. Leave display scaling alone. CyberAquarium respects Windows scaling, but mixing 100% and 150% monitors can make the tank look soft on one of them.
3. Do not stretch the window. The scene is composed for 16:9. On ultrawide monitors, letterboxing looks better than stretching.

4. Performance notes

The renderer targets a low frame rate when nothing is happening, and it never runs at full speed while the tank is covered. On integrated graphics the tank typically costs less than a video call; on a discrete GPU it is close to idle. If you see battery drain, check that Pause when hidden is on and that no other wallpaper app is also running.

5. When something looks wrong

• The tank is black. Update the graphics driver, then check Settings → Diagnostics → Renderer. The app reports whether it fell back to software rendering.
• The fish disappear behind icons. That is expected — wallpaper mode draws behind the desktop icons by design.
• The tank does not start with Windows. Re-enable startup in the app’s settings; Windows sometimes disables it after an update.

If none of that helps, post in the troubleshooting category on the forum with your Windows version and GPU model.