Does MacWall drain your MacBook battery?

The battery settings in MacWall

All of these are in Settings → Battery & Performance. A paused wallpaper keeps its last frame and starts again on its own.

• •Pause behind full-screen apps (on by default): a display covered by a full-screen app stops decoding until the wallpaper can be seen again.
• •Pause on battery (off by default): holds the frame whenever your Mac is unplugged and plays again when you plug it in, even while MacWall is closed.
• •Lower quality on battery (off by default): decodes less while your Mac runs on battery, never on the Lock Screen.
• •Pause when your Mac is busy (off by default): gives games, exports and builds the full processor.

What uses more or less

• •The video: a higher resolution or frame rate means more decoding. For your own videos, export at your display's resolution and 24 to 30 fps.
• •Displays: each display with its own wallpaper adds decoding work. With System Wallpaper playback, displays showing the same wallpaper share one player.
• •The Lock Screen: with System Wallpaper playback the Lock Screen plays the wallpaper unless you turn off Play the wallpaper while locked in Settings → Lock Screen. Once the display sleeps, nothing is decoded.

Check your own Mac

We haven't published a measured battery test, so we don't quote a figure. To see what your setup costs, open Activity Monitor → Energy with a wallpaper playing, then pause it from the MacWall menu bar icon and compare. With System Wallpaper playback macOS decodes the video in its own wallpaper process, so compare the whole Mac, not just MacWall's row.