Dynamic wallpapers are a fun way to personalize your desktop and make the switch to dark mode more gradual. Apple brought its own version of such wallpapers that change with the time of the day to macOS some time ago. Now, Google is toying with the idea of animated screensavers for ChromeOS, and they look far more detailed than what Apple offers.

Wallpapers and screensavers that change throughout the day were first spotted on ChromeOS in February this year. Back then, they appeared simply as two flags, one each for wallpapers and screensavers, but there was no way to test them out. ChromeOS has now picked up a couple of dynamic screensavers with the latest developer build, and we got a quick look at them.

ChromeOS-dynamic-screensavers

Under ChromeOS’s Screen saver setting, you will find two new Dawn to dark screensaver options: Cloud Flow and Earth Flow. After selecting one of them, you can preview it before setting it as your Chromebook’s screensaver. And as you can see in the sample below, Google’s time-of-the-day screensavers look natural, much like a timelapse video with nuanced changes to lighting and shadows. This is a far cry from Apple’s dynamic wallpapers that have only a handful of steps.

ChromeOS-dynamic-screensavers-anim

While a flag for dynamic wallpapers also appeared on ChromeOS previously, we could only try out the screensavers on the latest dev build. But there is no reason why Google cannot bring animated wallpapers to the top Chromebooks that sync with the clock and gently switch to the dark mode at night. Hopefully, Google will also add a few more screensavers and wallpapers down the line to give people more options to choose from.

If you are already on the developer build of ChromeOS, you can test the new screensavers for yourself right away. Those rocking the stable version will have to wait a while for the feature to be fully ready for a public release. But you can use our handy guide to switch to the dev channel if you want to check out the new screensavers right now.

Thanks: Nick