Changelog

Highlights of each release. Full notes and every installer are on GitHub releases. Mural checks for updates by itself and shows a tray notice when one is ready.

Pictures by OpenAI

• Generate and generative fill use OpenAI GPT Image by default (7 credits, 20 at best quality); Stability AI keeps background removal and upscaling, and can still paint pictures if you choose it in Settings (5 credits). Your own OpenAI API key works too.
• From Oct 23, Pro, Plus and Studio are CA$9.99, CA$19.99 and CA$39.99 a month. Subscribing by the end of Oct 22 keeps CA$5, CA$12 or CA$25 for as long as the subscription stays active.

You decide what goes on the desktop

• Mural no longer opens a wallpaper by itself: the editor starts on an empty wallpaper and shows your Library, so you pick what to work on.
• Nothing reaches the desktop until you click ▶ Apply. A first run no longer puts the sample on the desktop, and opening a template from the Library opens it for editing instead of applying it. After a restart Mural shows the wallpaper you last applied.

Editor

• + Add layer and + Add AI Layer sit under the layer list, replacing the Add layer and AI buttons in the top bar.
• In the layer list, Shift-click selects every layer between the last one you clicked and this one, and Ctrl-click adds or removes one.
• Edit this wallpaper with AI works again. It had failed every time with "temporarily unavailable" and never charged.
• Dropdowns no longer cut off their text (the AI model, the layer blend mode, picture quality and others).

Bring pictures to life

• Animate tab presets: Bring to life (idle motion like a game login screen: hair and cloth sway, particles drift, glows flicker, the camera stays put), Breathe and Cinematic.
• Layers can react to music: an audio-reactive motion (scale, opacity, position or rotation follows bass, mids or treble) and an audio amount on every effect preset. Capture what the PC plays from Settings → Performance.
• Custom GLSL shader layers with a Shadertoy-style mainImage, live compile errors in the panel, and iTime / iMouse / iAudio / iClick inputs, plus iChannel0 (a picture you choose) and iChannel1 (the live music spectrum).
• Layers can be scheduled: only between certain hours, or only in certain weather, with a fade. Switching wallpapers crossfades instead of cutting.

Design tools

• Multi-select (Shift/Ctrl-click, marquee, Ctrl+A), groups (Ctrl+G), distribute, text-box width handles, sequence frame reorder, a keyboard route for the mask, and Export loop (WebM).
• Library: rename, search, Apply from the card, Live badge, per-card Export and Duplicate, playlist order and Add current.

Gaming laptops

• Settings → Performance shows the measured frame rate, the real refresh rate and the GPU in use, with a warning when Windows fell back to software rendering.
• Game mode unloads the wallpaper after 30 s of a fullscreen game and brings it back afterwards; a per-app pause list; a battery percentage threshold; Windows' own fullscreen signal is honoured.
• A Test button for each personal AI key.

Billing safeguards

• Every AI button checks the cost against your balance first; spends of 30 credits or more ask for confirmation and show what will be left; a failed animation keeps the generated picture as a layer; upgrades open the billing portal rather than a second checkout; credits reset on your own billing date with 25 welcome credits in the first period.

Accessibility

• Tooltips show on keyboard focus, the toolbar folds into a More menu at large interface zoom, dialogs and the crop box fit small windows, the layer palette and the desktop editor are fully keyboard-operable.

Starting points

• Ten templates, each with a one-click Use this. The welcome card now offers three choices: start from a template, open the sample scene, or begin empty.
• Closing the editor with unapplied changes asks Apply, Discard or Keep editing instead of losing work.
• Next wallpaper in the toolbar, the tray and the eye button's menu; a Wallpapers submenu in the tray lists your library; mural:// links open or install a wallpaper from the website.

Mural Pro

• Founder pricing: subscribe before Oct 23, 2026 and your plan keeps its current price for as long as that subscription stays active.
• Credits now reset on your billing date, not the 1st of the month, and new keys start with 25 welcome credits.
• Every AI button checks your balance before it starts, and a job that fails or is cancelled refunds its credits automatically.

Performance

• Frame caps for 120 and 144 Hz displays, a performance readout in Settings, and a storage cleanup that removes orphaned frames and clips.

Editor

• Smart guides that snap to other layers and the canvas centre, a rotate handle, and copy/paste for layers. Click ripples on the desktop controls.
• Accessibility pass: labels on every control, a live region for status messages, an interface zoom setting, and reduced motion when Windows asks for it.

Fixes

• The right-click-menu setting applies again; the 1 and 2 fps modes hold their rate; stars no longer drift; banding in the aurora and gradient shaders is gone; glow no longer shows a rectangle around text; the clock's AM/PM no longer overlaps the digits.

Right-click menu

• The eye button on the desktop now has a right-click menu with every Mural action: Edit this wallpaper, Open Mural, Next wallpaper, hide/show and arrange icons, and Hide this button. It works on Windows 11 without touching the system menu.
• New option in Settings → Desktop: "Put Mural in the main right-click menu (Windows 11)". It restores the full Windows 10-style menu so Mural is a top-level entry instead of living under "Show more options". Explorer restarts for a moment; the wallpaper re-attaches by itself.
• Settings now says that Shift+right-click opens the full menu directly.

Finding the controls

• The welcome card, the ? shortcuts sheet, the first tray notice, Settings and the website now spell out where Mural's buttons are: the eye button at the bottom-right of the desktop (click hides icons, right-click opens the menu), the tray icon under the taskbar's ^ arrow, and "Show more options" in the desktop menu.

Built from a round of reviews by six kinds of user: first-timer, designer, careful buyer, gamer on a laptop, low-vision keyboard user, and Wallpaper Engine veteran.

Performance and reliability

• Pausing now really stops the GPU: under a fullscreen game or on battery the renderer stops, videos pause, and the wallpaper window on the covered display is hidden. Any fullscreen app pauses every display; a maximized app hides only its own. Web wallpapers are throttled like a background tab.
• Correct geometry on scaled displays (150% 4K, laptop panels). Monitors plugged, unplugged or rescaled, and Explorer restarts, rebuild the wallpaper windows automatically.
• Pause state is re-checked after sleep/wake. Update checks skip battery power. "Start with Windows" and "Pause on battery" are on by default for new installs. On battery the wallpaper drops to a still frame a second (the clock keeps ticking).
• The tray icon now shows in the installed app, with "Start wallpaper" and a "Pause wallpaper" toggle. Still scenes render at 1 to 2 fps instead of 60.

Security

• Web wallpapers no longer get Mural's internal bridge, so a page cannot spend credits, read your files or change settings. They run in their own session with downloads, popups, permission prompts and sound blocked.

Money and transparency

• Edit with AI shows its price on the button and lets you pick Fast (5 credits) or Best (20); the default is Fast.
• Settings → Mural Pro has "Manage or cancel subscription", honest price notes, and a "What leaves your PC" section. Animation jobs survive network blips, refund on download failure, and keep finished clips in My animations.

Editor

• Canvas zoom and pan (Ctrl+wheel, Ctrl+0 fit, Ctrl+1 real pixels, Space+drag), alignment buttons, scale in %, rotation to a tenth of a degree.
• Text layers: every weight from Thin to Black, letter spacing, line height, italic, uppercase, shadow blur/offset/colour, a font picker.
• Export PNG at full canvas size (covers the whole spanned desktop). Three templates: Snowy night, Synthwave, Rainy evening. Animated GIFs play. Export and import wallpapers as a single .mural file; .mural files open from Explorer.
• A welcome card on first launch. Keyboard: focusable layer rows, context menus from the keyboard, a ? / F1 shortcuts sheet, dialogs that trap focus and never land on a destructive button, higher-contrast helper text.
• 12-hour clocks and Fahrenheit where the locale uses them; the weather city defaults to your time zone's city. Friendly names for effects and motion. Locked layers are read-only and cannot be deleted.
• Desktop icons: the original layout is saved by icon name, only primary-display icons move, Windows' auto-arrange is restored with the layout, and icons come back when Mural quits.

• Release hardening: in-app dialogs replace browser prompts that never worked in Electron; delete confirmations; unsaved-work recovery after a crash; undo after dragging, with slider bursts merged; Save no longer cancels running AI jobs; deleted wallpapers are cleaned out of playlists; crash handlers in every process and a self-healing wallpaper renderer; atomic settings and library writes.
• Drag and drop pictures or videos onto the canvas to add them (several pictures become a sequence).
• Shortcuts: Ctrl+D duplicate, arrow keys nudge (Shift = 10 px), Escape deselects, Ctrl+[ / ] reorder.
• The editor remembers its window size, position and maximized state. Moving a Cover or Fit layer now sticks.

• Multi-path animations: give one picture several AI paths. Playback picks a path, plays it out and back to frame 1, rests, then picks another. Random or in-order, a pause on frame 1, and generated holds (idle motion that stays in place) for the rests. Paths generate in the background while the layer keeps playing.
• Desktop icons: a small button in the bottom-right corner of the desktop hides and shows all icons with one click. Arrange icons around the wallpaper moves them into a tidy block on the calmest side of the picture, away from widgets and the subject; it can run on every apply, and Restore puts them back.
• The current viewport is always outlined and labelled on the canvas. The floating layer action bar is gone in favour of the right-click menu, corner handles and properties panel.