Live Lock Screen

Set any video or GIF as your GNOME lock screen background.

Features • Installation • Requirements • Known Issues • Support

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Warning

NVIDIA users: on recent NVIDIA drivers, prolonged lock sessions may trigger a kernel-side memory leak that can lead to system-wide OOM events or crashes. This appears to be a driver issue rather than a bug in the extension.

Tip

Having trouble with the current version? You can try an older version of the extension though sticking with the latest version is highly recommended for better performance.

Design Philosophy

"Do one thing and do it well."

— Unix philosophy

Live Lock Screen focuses on a single goal: playing multimedia on the lock screen. It is designed to be simple, lightweight, and reliable.

If you're looking for more advanced lock screen or desktop customization, you may want to explore alternative extensions or check out some forks of this project.

Features

	Feature
🎬	Video & GIF playback	Use any video or GIF file as the lock screen background
🔁	Looping	Seamless loop support
🎨	Scaling modes	Cover, fit, or stretch
🔲	Transparency	Transparent video support (RGBA)
⏸️	Smart pause	Automatically pauses on suspend and resumes on wake
🌌	Fade-in	Configurable fade-in animation
🖥️	Multi-monitor	Works across all your displays
🌫️	Blur effect	Adjustable blur radius and brightness
🎞️	Frame rate control	Configurable from 1 to 120 FPS
🔊	Audio	Optional audio output with volume control and fade-in/out
🔑	Password prompt reactions	Blur/brightness change, video pause, or grayscale when the prompt appears

Installation

From GNOME Extensions (recommended for most users)

Tip

Feeling adventurous? The experimental branch has the latest (possibly unstable) features.

Manual installation

1. Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/nick-redwill/LiveLockScreen.git

2. Copy it to your extensions folder

cp -r LiveLockScreen ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/live-lockscreen@nick-redwill

3. Log out and back in, then enable the extension

gnome-extensions enable live-lockscreen@nick-redwill

4. Open the extension preferences and pick your video file 🎉

Requirements

• GNOME Shell 46+
• A playback backend: MPV (recommended) or GStreamer (fallback)

Important

Up until version 4.0.0, the extension relied solely on GStreamer for video playback. Starting from that version, MPV is the main and recommended backend.

GStreamer remains available as a fallback for now (you can force it in the Debug section of the preferences), but the end goal is to remove it entirely. See issue #25 for the reasoning behind this decision.

If you run into problems with MPV playback, please open an issue.

MPV (recommended)

Distro	Command
Fedora	sudo dnf install mpv
Ubuntu / Debian	sudo apt install mpv
Arch	sudo pacman -S mpv

GStreamer (fallback) — click to expand

You'll need both the GStreamer plugins and the GTK4 video sink (gtk4paintablesink).

GStreamer good/bad/ugly plugins

# Fedora
sudo dnf install gstreamer1-plugins-good gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free gstreamer1-plugins-ugly gstreamer1-plugins-bad-free-extras

# Ubuntu / Debian
sudo apt install gstreamer1.0-plugins-good gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad gstreamer1.0-plugins-ugly

# Arch
sudo pacman -S gst-plugins-good gst-plugins-bad gst-plugins-ugly

GStreamer GTK4 video sink

# Fedora
sudo dnf install gstreamer1-plugin-gtk4

# Ubuntu 24.10+ / Debian (newer)
sudo apt install gstreamer1.0-gtk4

# Arch
sudo pacman -S gst-plugin-gtk4

[!NOTE] On Ubuntu 24.04, gstreamer1.0-gtk4 isn't available as a package. Either build it from source or download it from Launchpad.

Known Issues

• Possible clicking/crackling sounds when pausing/playing video with audio

Found something else? Report it here.

Support

If you enjoy this extension, consider buying me a tea. I'm not really a coffee person :D

License

Released under the AGPL-3.0 license.