BreakTheWall

Stuck with a mandatory workplace wallpaper on your Windows laptop that you’d love to replace?

This repo offers a loophole to personalize your desktop background, allowing you to choose your wallpaper while keeping within policy boundaries and without needing admin rights! Yaay 🎉

Say goodbye to the default and make your workspace truly yours! :")

Additional Info

• The scripts are designed to be run on Windows machines only, and have been tested to work on Windows 10 & 11.
• The scripts are written in PowerShell and VBScript, and hence require no additional software installations.
• The scripts are also designed to be non-intrusive and can be easily removed by simply deleting the entire repository from your system.

Usage

Clone Repository

To get started, you can clone this repository to your local machine by running the following command in your terminal:

git clone https://github.com/Prajwal-Prathiksh/BreakTheWall.git

If you don't have git installed, you can download the zip file and extract it to your desired location. (If this is the first time you're working with PowerShell scripts, save and extract the repository in your Downloads directory, to simplify the process.)

GUI Mode (Recommended)

To change your wallpaper using the GUI, you can follow these steps:

1. Save the image/images as per instructions in the One-time Change or Scheduled Change sections.
2. [Optional] You can update the interval between wallpaper changes from the GUI itself. By default, the interval is set to 1 hour.
3. Run the BreakTheWall_GUI.ps1 script by right-clicking on it and selecting Run with PowerShell. (For pro-users, you can also run it from the PowerShell terminal, but make sure to navigate to the script's location first.)

One-time Change

You can use the Utils/OneTimeChanger.ps1 script to change your wallpaper to a custom one, as a one-time change. Here's how you can do it:

1. Store your desired wallpaper as wallpaper.jpg in the Downloads directory

The script currently supports only .jpg files. If you have a different format, you can convert it to .jpg using an online converter, and the name must follow the format wallpaper.jpg.

If you're unsure about the location of Downloads directory, you can find it opening File Explorer and typing %USERPROFILE%\Downloads in the address bar.

1. Run the Utils/OneTimeChanger.ps1 script.

That's it! Your wallpaper should now be updated to the one you saved! <3

Upon restarting your system or changing monitors, the wallpaper might revert to the default one. In such cases, you can re-run the steps above to update it again.

Scheduled Change

You can use the Utils/SafeRunAutoScheduler.ps1 script to keep changing your wallpapers at regular intervals automatically, from a set of saved wallpapers. Here's how you can do it:

1. Create a new folder named custom_wallpapers in the Downloads directory (Eg. %USERPROFILE%\Downloads\custom_wallpapers).
2. Store all the wallpapers you want to cycle through in the custom_wallpapers folder. As mentioned before, the files must be in .jpg format only, but can have any name.
3. [Optional] If you want to change the interval between wallpaper changes, you can modify the AutoScheduler.vbs script. By default, the interval is set to 1 hour.
4. Run the Utils/SafeRunAutoScheduler.ps1 script.

That's it! Your wallpapers will now change automatically at the set interval! <3

A log file named wallpaper_refresh.log will be created in the root directory of the repository, which will contain the timestamps of each wallpaper change. This can be used to verify the script's working or to debug any issues.

You can stop the script at any time by opening the Task Manager and ending the Microsoft Windows Based Script Host process.

Reset to Default Wallpaper

If it ever becomes necessary for you to revert to the default wallpaper :"(, you can use the Utils/ResetWallpaper.ps1 script to do so. Here's how you can do it:

1. Run the Utils/ResetWallpaper.ps1 script.

That's it! Your wallpaper should now be updated to the default one .... :"(

Run scripts on Startup

If you want the scripts to run automatically every time you start your system, you can follow these steps:

1. In the directory where you cloned the repository, right-click on the AutoScheduler.vbs script and select Create Shortcut.
2. Press Win + R to open the Run dialog box and type shell:startup to open the Startup folder.
3. Move the shortcut you created in step 1 to the Startup folder.
4. Open Task Manager and navigate to the Startup tab to verify that the script has been added to the startup programs, and is Enabled.