Daily Art Wallpapers with Google Arts & Culture and Systemd

Google has a lovely Arts & Culture extension for Chrome that displays a random masterpiece from museums around the world every time you open a new tab. It’s a nice way to discover art you’d never otherwise encounter.

The problem: it only works when Chrome is open. I wanted this on my desktop wallpaper, system-wide, updating automatically even if I never touch a browser.

Here’s my setup on Arch Linux with Hyprland.

Desktop with Google Arts & Culture wallpaper

How It Works

Google’s extension pulls artwork from a public JSON endpoint that lists featured pieces with high-resolution image URLs. A simple bash script fetches this list, picks a random artwork, downloads it, and uses hyprctl to set it as the wallpaper.

The script also saves metadata about the current artwork, so you can always find out what’s on your screen and visit the museum page.

The Script

Save this to ~/.local/bin/google-arts-wallpaper:

#!/bin/bash
# Google Arts & Culture Wallpaper Fetcher

set -euo pipefail

DATA_DIR="${HOME}/.local/share/google-arts"
API_URL="https://www.gstatic.com/culturalinstitute/tabext/imax_2_2.json"
RESOLUTION="2560"
CURRENT_IMAGE="${DATA_DIR}/current.webp"
CURRENT_META="${DATA_DIR}/current.json"

mkdir -p "${DATA_DIR}"

# Fetch artwork list and pick a random one
ARTWORK=$(curl -sS "${API_URL}" | jq -c '.[]' | shuf -n 1)

if [[ -z "${ARTWORK}" ]]; then
    echo "Error: Failed to fetch artwork data" >&2
    exit 1
fi

# Extract metadata
TITLE=$(echo "${ARTWORK}" | jq -r '.title')
CREATOR=$(echo "${ARTWORK}" | jq -r '.creator')
ATTRIBUTION=$(echo "${ARTWORK}" | jq -r '.attribution')
IMAGE_BASE=$(echo "${ARTWORK}" | jq -r '.image')
LINK=$(echo "${ARTWORK}" | jq -r '.link')

IMAGE_URL="${IMAGE_BASE}=s${RESOLUTION}-rw"
ART_LINK="https://artsandculture.google.com/${LINK}"

echo "Selected: ${TITLE} by ${CREATOR}"

# Download image
curl -sS -o "${CURRENT_IMAGE}" "${IMAGE_URL}"

# Save metadata
cat > "${CURRENT_META}" << EOF
{
    "title": "${TITLE}",
    "creator": "${CREATOR}",
    "attribution": "${ATTRIBUTION}",
    "link": "${ART_LINK}",
    "downloaded": "$(date -Iseconds)"
}
EOF

# Update hyprpaper
if command -v hyprctl &> /dev/null; then
    hyprctl hyprpaper unload all 2>/dev/null || true
    hyprctl hyprpaper preload "${CURRENT_IMAGE}"
    hyprctl hyprpaper wallpaper ",${CURRENT_IMAGE}"
    echo "Wallpaper updated!"
fi

echo "Title: ${TITLE}"
echo "Artist: ${CREATOR}"
echo "Museum: ${ATTRIBUTION}"
echo "Link: ${ART_LINK}"

Make it executable:

chmod +x ~/.local/bin/google-arts-wallpaper

Dependencies: curl, jq, and hyprpaper (if using Hyprland).

The Systemd Timer

To run this automatically, create a user-level systemd service and timer.

Service (~/.config/systemd/user/google-arts-wallpaper.service):

[Unit]
Description=Fetch Google Arts & Culture wallpaper
Wants=network-online.target
After=network-online.target

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=%h/.local/bin/google-arts-wallpaper
Environment=DISPLAY=:0
Environment=WAYLAND_DISPLAY=wayland-1

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

Timer (~/.config/systemd/user/google-arts-wallpaper.timer):

[Unit]
Description=Daily Google Arts & Culture wallpaper update

[Timer]
OnCalendar=*-*-* 08:00:00
OnBootSec=1min
Persistent=true
RandomizedDelaySec=300

[Install]
WantedBy=timers.target

The timer:

Runs daily at 8:00 AM
Also runs 1 minute after boot (so you always have art even after a fresh start)
Uses Persistent=true to catch up if the system was off at the scheduled time
Adds a random 0-5 minute delay to avoid hammering Google’s API at exactly 08:00:00

Enable and Start

systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user enable --now google-arts-wallpaper.timer

To run it immediately:

systemctl --user start google-arts-wallpaper.service

Check the current artwork:

cat ~/.local/share/google-arts/current.json | jq

What’s on My Screen?

The metadata file at ~/.local/share/google-arts/current.json includes a link to the artwork’s page on Google Arts & Culture. You can add a keybind or alias to quickly open it:

alias whatart='jq -r .link ~/.local/share/google-arts/current.json | xargs xdg-open'

Now every morning, my desktop greets me with a different masterpiece—no browser required.