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A while ago I created a desktop slideshow in Shotwell I think. I wanted to change the slideshow. The pictures in the slideshow are not featured in the appearances menu under system settings. the demo screen in the appearances menu shows an image from a new slideshow I created in Shotwell, but I'm not able to see that image on my desktop.

The appearance folders available do not contain the images from the slideshow. The only program I have found that allows you to create a custom desktop slideshow is Shotwell. I figured, that must be how I can replace the old slideshow.

I used Shotwell to create a new desktop slideshow. I cannot see the new slideshow, the old slideshow is still there. I can't figure out how to replace the old slideshow with the new one. Any ideas? It overrides everything. Using Ubuntu 14.04.

Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy
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TMundo
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2 Answers2

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The slideshows are .xml files. By default, the slideshow is stored in ~/.local/share/shotwell/wallpaper/wallpaper.xml

This is evident if you run gsettings get on the appropriate schema responsible for setting wallpaper in GNOME and Unity desktops after creating the slideshow.

$ gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.background picture-uri
'file:///home/xieerqi/.local/share/shotwell/wallpaper/wallpaper.xml'

As for why you haven't been able to alter the wallpaper, it seems to me that creating new slideshow failed, so the original xml slideshow stayed.

You could attempt removing the old file ~/.local/share/shotwell/wallpaper/wallpaper.xml and re-create the slide-show.

Also, Shotwell isn't the only program for creating slideshows. It's a common knowledge in Ubuntu world that slideshows are .xml files. For instance, I personally used this for creating command-line utility for creating a slideshow: https://askubuntu.com/a/840381/295286 You could potentially use that as alternative to Shotwell

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Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy
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2

Shotwell does offer a function to create a wallpaper slideshow, but there seems to be a bug in that feature: the created wallpaper.xml file is not valid. The <starttime> tag is missing from its start. To resolve this:

  1. Open ~/.local/share/shotwell/wallpaper/wallpaper.xml in any text editor;
  2. Add <starttime> tag as the first one level below <background> tag;
  3. Make sure that the date and time specified inside <starttime> tag are in the past.

After you're done, the start of wallpaper.xml should look something like this:

<background>
  <starttime>
    <year>2009</year>
    <month>08</month>
    <day>04</day>
    <hour>00</hour>
    <minute>00</minute>
    <second>00</second>
  </starttime>
  <static>
    <duration>300.0</duration>
    <file>/home/user/.local/share/shotwell/wallpaper/background.jpg</file>
  </static>
...
Томица Кораћ
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