Weather Wallpaper

This Python script fetches weather data for Fayetteville, AR from the OpenWeatherMap API and sets your desktop background to a corresponding landscape photo from the Unsplash API.

Currently only configured to change the desktop background for Windows and macOS systems. On Linux systems, the script will only download the image to the root directory of the project.

How to Use

To run the application on your machine, you’ll first need to either clone this repository or download the source code as a ZIP file. Then, follow the steps below to set up the application.

Run the following command in your machine’s terminal to clone the repository:

$ git clone https://github.com/cadedupont/weather-wallpaper.git

If you chose to download the source code as a ZIP file, extract the ZIP file to a directory of your choice.

Then, navigate to the project’s root directory:

$ cd /path/to/weather-wallpaper

Setting up API keys

Before running the script, obtain API keys for OpenWeatherMap and Unsplash. Included in the project is a .env.example file formatted as follows:

# OpenWeatherMap key
WEATHER_KEY='your_key_here'

# Unsplash keys
UNSPLASH_ACCESS_KEY='your_key_here'
UNSPLASH_SECRET_KEY='your_key_here'
UNSPLASH_REDIRECT_URI='your_key_here'

Rename the file to .env and replace each instance of your_key_here with your corresponding API key.

Installing Dependencies

Ensure you have the required dependencies by running:

$ pip install -r requirements.txt

Running the Script

One-time Execution

Execute the script to generate a single desktop background reflecting the current weather:

$ python /path/to/weather-wallpaper.py

If you have a shebang at the beginning of the script, you can run it directly:

$ ./path/to/weather-wallpaper.py

The generated file will be saved in the root directory of the project, the name of the file being the current date formatted as YYYY-MM-DD.jpg.

Using cron for Periodic Updates

Edit your cron tasks to run the script periodically. Open the cron configuration:

$ crontab -e

Add the following line to run the script every hour:

$ 0 * * * * /path/to/weather-wallpaper.py

Ensure the script is executable and has a shebang at the beginning.

$ chmod u+x /path/to/weather-wallpaper.py

Continuous Background Updates

Note: This approach continuously checks for weather changes, making frequent OpenWeatherMap API calls. Use it only if there are no API request restrictions.

Adjust the main function in weather-wallpaper.py to continuously update the desktop background based on weather changes:

# ... (previous code)

while True:
    new_weather: dict = requests.get(weather_url).json()
    new_query: str = get_search_query(new_weather)
    if new_query != current_query:
        set_wallpaper(new_query, unsplash_api)
        current_query = new_query
    time.sleep(1)

Run the script in the background using nohup:

$ nohup /path/to/weather-wallpaper.py &

To stop the process, find the process ID:

$ ps ax | grep weather-wallpaper.py

Use the kill command to stop the process:

$ kill id

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.