Desktop Earth: Real-Time Satellite Wallpapers

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Perfect for those who spend all day in their basements.

Desktop Earth is a utility that generates wallpapers from satellite imagery of our home planet. It runs from the system tray, continuously updating the wallpaper to reflect changes in sunlight, foliage and even snow cover.

Automatically resizing images to match the Windows PC's native resolution and reduce the load on the system, Desktop Earth takes care of itself for the most part. However, the user can control the level of cloud cover, which time zone the wallpaper is centered on, if night lights appear on the dark areas of the satellite images, and of course, the frequency of updates.

Needless to say, DE (latest version 2.1) requires a permanent internet connection. You can download the utility here.

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Rico Mossesgeld
Rico Mossesgeld
Contributing writer

Rico was a contributing writer at Tom's Guide. Based in the Philippines, Rico was plugged into the latest tech news to cover the latest future-gazing products and industry announcements. Rico no longer actively writes for Tom's Guide, and now works as a systems engineer. During his time at the site, he covered topics such as robotics, home office products and retro video games.

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25 Comments Comment from the forums
  • jhansonxi
    "Perfect for those who spend all day in their basements."

    The outdoors is SO overrated. It's all smog, allergens, and UV radiation. Corporate-controlled environments are much safer.
    Reply
  • silentq
    pretty neat. can't wait for the live broadcast of hidden camera from japanese female washroom next.
    Reply
  • Vampyrbyte
    This is years old.
    Reply
  • Clintonio
    silentqpretty neat. can't wait for the live broadcast of hidden camera from japanese female washroom next.Go find a hole and crawl in it.
    Reply
  • JOSHSKORN
    "Perfect for those who spend all day in their basements."

    Um I live in California. I don't think they have any houses with basements here. :) I'll check it out, though.
    Reply
  • Gin Fushicho
    Pretty cool. but I think I'm good with the few thousand wallpapers I already have.
    Reply
  • cmartin011
    Tested on Windows XP 32 and 64 bit versions. Should work on older Windows variants as well." older this may be buggy on newer huh?
    Reply
  • bustapr
    Its not actually real-time. The weebsites says it updattes the image once a month.
    Reply
  • zipzoomflyhigh
    Only a ghostly nerd who never leaves his basement would assume we have basements in Florida. That's what happens when you have no life.
    Reply
  • Humans think
    VampyrByteThis is years old.
    Yeah i had this on my computer some years ago, I don't know if it was from the same company but i am sure it was the same idea. Gets boring after a while but sure is nice to see areas falling into darkness and lights in the cities appearing.
    Reply