Description
The macOS lock screen can play those slow aerial flyovers, but only Apple's own. Got a clip you'd rather see every time you wake your Mac? System Settings has no button for that, and Apple offers no public API either.
Vidwall Hub fills the gap. Drag an mp4 or mov into its window and it registers the video in the system's own Aerial wallpaper catalog, sets it as the current wallpaper, and your lock screen starts playing it. Your videos also show up as a Vidwall Videos group in System Settings → Wallpaper, right next to Apple's aerials, so you can switch between them there.
It's the free companion to the author's Vidwall live-wallpaper app, whose sandbox can't touch the lock screen. Once a video is imported, playback belongs to the system wallpaper process; Vidwall Hub doesn't stay running or hold on to CPU or GPU. Requires macOS 26 or later.
Drop in, done: mp4, mov and m4v become your wallpaper and lock screen animation right away, with no admin rights; everything stays in your user folder.
Patches, never rewrites: it only adds its own category and entries to the system catalog, so Apple's built-in aerials stay untouched.
No re-encoding on macOS 26: mov files are copied as-is and mp4 or m4v files are just remuxed, so quality and length are preserved.
Ready for macOS 27: the new system needs HEVC temporal layers or the lock screen freezes or goes black after the first unlock; Vidwall Hub re-encodes the first 30 seconds to compliant HEVC Main 10 in the background, and copies videos that already qualify.
Clean removal: deleting a video removes its file and thumbnail too; if it was the active wallpaper, it switches to another of your videos or a built-in aerial so no ghost entry is left behind.
Restart wallpaper services: one button reloads the system wallpaper agents when a new video doesn't show up.
URL scheme import:
Vidwall Hub fills the gap. Drag an mp4 or mov into its window and it registers the video in the system's own Aerial wallpaper catalog, sets it as the current wallpaper, and your lock screen starts playing it. Your videos also show up as a Vidwall Videos group in System Settings → Wallpaper, right next to Apple's aerials, so you can switch between them there.
It's the free companion to the author's Vidwall live-wallpaper app, whose sandbox can't touch the lock screen. Once a video is imported, playback belongs to the system wallpaper process; Vidwall Hub doesn't stay running or hold on to CPU or GPU. Requires macOS 26 or later.
Features
Drop in, done: mp4, mov and m4v become your wallpaper and lock screen animation right away, with no admin rights; everything stays in your user folder.
Patches, never rewrites: it only adds its own category and entries to the system catalog, so Apple's built-in aerials stay untouched.
No re-encoding on macOS 26: mov files are copied as-is and mp4 or m4v files are just remuxed, so quality and length are preserved.
Ready for macOS 27: the new system needs HEVC temporal layers or the lock screen freezes or goes black after the first unlock; Vidwall Hub re-encodes the first 30 seconds to compliant HEVC Main 10 in the background, and copies videos that already qualify.
Clean removal: deleting a video removes its file and thumbnail too; if it was the active wallpaper, it switches to another of your videos or a built-in aerial so no ghost entry is left behind.
Restart wallpaper services: one button reloads the system wallpaper agents when a new video doesn't show up.
URL scheme import:
vidwallhub://open?file=/path/to/video.mp4 imports a video from a script or another app, so it slots into your automations.