BgRaster

Inspiration

BgRaster is inspired by the classic Sysinternals utility BgInfo. It was executed perfectly in 2000, but its structure and features feel dated today. In particular, it's focussed on the needs of an IT administrator from that era. It's missing many features that would be valuable to a creative professional in the 2020s.

Summary

BgRaster is a fast console application that uses modern frameworks and APIs to generate and assign wallpapers for any displays it finds. It has many features targetted at creative professionals like AV technicians, video engineers, and real time graphics specialists. It has a rich set of command-line options, but its full power lies in its TOML configuration files.

Highlights

• One PNG per video output — each Windows monitor receives a wallpaper sized to its native resolution, anchored to its desktop position.
• Slices — outputs have one slice by default, but can be split into any number, each with different settings.
• Short-lived - BgRaster runs until its work is done then exits. The host machine has no additional load from a dynamically-rendered desktop, HTML rendering, or lingering OS hooks.
• Idempotent — early-exits when configuration, version, and hardware fingerprint all match the previous run.
• Portable — single-file .exe without runtime dependencies, built for speed.

Sample output

Supported environments

Component	Requirement
OS	Windows 10 1809+ or Windows 11
Architecture	x64
Privileges	Administrator (required by IDesktopWallpaper for the SYSTEM session)
DPI	Per-Monitor v2 aware

Linux and macOS are not supported — the project is intentionally Windows-specific.

When does the wallpaper get updated?

Like the original BgInfo, BgRaster runs gets its work done as fast as possible and shuts down. Depending on your use case, you might want to automate its execution with a login script, scheduled task or simply a desktop shortcut.

Quick start

Install

Download the latest BgRaster.exe from the Releases page (or build it yourself, see below) and place it anywhere on disk. It needs libSkiaSharp.dll in the same folder too.

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/gameshowpro/GameshowPro.git
cd GameshowPro/BgRaster
dotnet publish src/BgRaster.csproj -c Release -r win-x64 /p:PublishAot=true

The published binary lands in src/bin/Release/net10.0/win-x64/publish/BgRaster.exe.

First run, no arguments

.\BgRaster.exe

This writes one PNG per discovered output to %TEMP%\BgRaster\ and a lastRun.toml describing what it did. The PNGs as assigned to the desktop of each output.

Generate default config file

.\BgRaster.exe --config %programdata%\BgRaster\config.toml

If the file you specified doesn't exist, it will be created containing the defaults that were used. This is a great starting point for your own custom configuration.

The next time you run, it will load its config from this file rather than using defaults. If you don't specify a config file path, it will still find it if it exists in one of the default locations: 1. In the same folder as BgRaster.exe. 1. %ProgramData%\BgInfo 1. %LocalAppData%\BgInfo 1. %AppData%\BgInfo

Sample configurations

Identification overlay — show machine name, output index, and resolution on each screen:

[text]
title = ["${MachineName}"]
subtitle = ["Output ${OutputIndexPlusOne} - ${Width}x${Height}"]
size = ["3vh"]

[background]
color = ["#101820"]

[grid]
size = ["100px"]
coordinates = [true]

Per-output color wash — cycle red / green / blue across three outputs:

[background]
color = ["#FF0000", "#00FF00", "#0000FF"]

Slice a 4K wall into four HD quadrants:

[[output]]
target = 0

[[output.slice]]
x = "0"; y = "0"; width = "50vw"; height = "50vh"
[[output.slice]]
x = "50vw"; y = "0"; width = "50vw"; height = "50vh"
[[output.slice]]
x = "0"; y = "50vh"; width = "50vw"; height = "50vh"
[[output.slice]]
x = "50vw"; y = "50vh"; width = "50vw"; height = "50vh"

Documentation

Documentation root

• Features - A summary of visual features with images and config examples.
• TOML schema reference — every section, key, type, default, and unit.
• CLI schema reference — every command-line option mapped to its TOML equivalent.

AI Disclosure

As a project started in 2026, yes, substantial parts of this application were built using AI tools. I could never have acheived the the application scope, automation, test framework, and quality of documentation in my spare time without it. Be assured that the design, concept, functional testing, and documentation proof-reading burned many human neuron hours.

Authors

Hi, I'm Hamish Barjonas. I provide custom solutions for the broadcast producion, live entertainment, and sports industries. Yes, including game shows. See more details here. As a keen FOSS advocate, I try to keep as much non-customer-specific code open for the wider community as possible, under the Game Show Pro umbrella. If you're in a related industry, I'd love to colloborate! You can contact me here.

License

MIT.