7 Lesser Known But Remarkable Muzei Live Wallpaper Extensions
Not too long ago, we brought to you a different and remarkable wallpaper app for Android called Muzei. Essentially, the app is a live wallpaper that picks images from various configurable sources with customizable options that make it a charm to use, refreshing backgrounds on your smartphone or tablet at regular intervals, all packaged in a polished, elegant interface. The uniqueness of Muzei stems from the fact that it employs an open source library whereby allowing third-party developers to create “extensions” for Muzei that add many more sources to pick wallpapers from. The Google Play Store is quite riddled with them right now, and hence, what follows is a collection of some of the relatively-unknown yet wonderful extensions for Muzei Live Wallpaper for Android.
500px AdvancedConfig
For amazing photos and images, 500px needs to introduction. There exist a couple of other 500px Muzei extensions as well, but this one offers the maximum customization possible. 500px AdvancedConfig offers 7 different sources with all the categories on offer in 500px, allowing combination of categories to the combined for wallpaper choices. This is also one of the very few Muzei extensions that allow the widest range of change intervals, ranging from 1 minute to an astounding 100 hours! Completing the tally are saving image caches for later viewing (especially useful if you’ve opted for shorter change intervals) and keeping pictures for one more refresh (should you find one that you really like). You may also share pictures across your social networks.
Install 500px AdvancedConfiig for Muzei from Play Store
Cast for Muzei
If you have Google Chromecast, you’ll really appreciate this Muzei extension. Cast for Muzei pulls images directly from the feed that Chromecast uses as its source, and the result is really beautiful images to decorate your Android’s screen with. The extension isn’t as customizable as the former one, with the only options being custom image change intervals and the option to limit the change to WiFi only, useful if you’re on a limited data plan.
Install Cast for Muzei from Play Store
Muzei – deviantART
deviantART is another great source for fantastic artwork, and this extension makes full use of that. What I like the most about deviantART extension for Muzei is that it supports all the search queries/commands that you’d use on the website itself. You specify the query in criteria for pulling images, and the results will return only those that qualify. So, if you supply “favby:{username}”, it will give all images favorited by {username}. Tags can also be similarly specified. Other settings include refresh interval, number of images to pull from the specified query, toggling NSFW content, and downloading images only on WiFi.
Install Muzei – deviantART from Play Store
Dropzei for Muzei
As the name indicates, this extension aims at creating a relationship between Muzei & Dropbox, allowing you to select one (or more) folders from the popular file sharing & cloud storage service as sources for Muzei wallpapers. It might be particularly useful in those cases if you own an iOS device and would like to have your Camera Roll images set as Muzei wallpapers. Another usage is where you specify shared folders that you and your friends/family populate together. Dropzei has a rather limited set of options, but WiFi only update, custom internal etc are still there.
Install Dropzei for Muzei from Play Store
Instagram Muzei Addon
Another no brainer, albeit with great functionality. The sole purpose of this extension is to let you connect your Instagram account with Muzei, and then display images from either your own feed, your uploads, liked photos or popular images. The only other option is to change the refresh interval, which also makes Instagram Muzei Addon one of those extensions that have the least customizations possible.
Install Instagram Muzei Addon from Play Store
Muzei Music Extension
This is another one of my personal favorites. The extension makes the album art for the currently playing song your background image, although you’ll find maximum use for it only if you have a well organized music library with proper IDV3 tags. You see, the way Muzei Music is set up is that it first looks for the artwork for Now Playing song on your device, and if missing, will fetch it from Last.fm. Consequently, this extension will also incur regular mobile internet charges for you. For cases where no song is playing, you can specify a favorite image to be used as wallpaper. Muzei Music extension is full of customization options, and will require notification access as well. Overall, it’s one of the highly recommended ones to have.
Install Muzei Music Extension from Play Store
MultiMuze
Arguably the best extension for Muzei hands down. MultiMuze addresses one of the core problems with Muzei – the inability to have multiple sources – and allows you to set any and all the installed extensions to be used for wallpaper source at the same time. The extension doesn’t have a default source of its own, and lists all the other extension that you may have to enable them all at once. Based on the number of enabled extensions within MultiMuze, images will be cycled between sources. The only option that MultiMuze itself offers is changing the refresh interval, which ranges from one minute to once in 24 hours. It’s also noteworthy that if an extension is enabled through MultiMuze, it’s own refresh interval setting will be overridden by the latter.
MultiMuze is a must have if you are using Muzei – there’s really no arguing with that.
Install MutliMuze from Play Store
That pretty much concludes our list. I would like to have one honorable mention here in the form of Taskei for Muzei, which we extensively reviewed and might be a good read if you’re interested in having ultimate control of your Muzei Live Wallpaper.
Got any other suggestions that we might have missed? Let us know in your comments below.
Great selection but you definitely missed Astronomy Picture Of the Day or APOD
The idea was to go for some of the lesser known extensions that are mention-worthy. APOD is already well known. Nevertheless, thanks for the recommendation and liking the selection!