If you are a big fan of the popular xkcd webcomic you might have wondered how to use the comic as your desktop wallpaper, and today I’ve got that answer for you in the form of a tiny application that rotates your wallpaper with random xkcd comics.

Using Random xkcd Wallpaper

Installing the application is as simple as downloading, extracting, and launching. The Random xkcd button will set your wallpaper to a random comic each time you press it… rather fun.

If your wallpaper shows up all stretched out, you should right-click on the desktop and choose Personalize, then go to Desktop Background.

From there you will want to choose the “Center” option shown below, to center the wallpaper instead of stretching it out. You can also change your background color to something else with the very obvious blue link.

Windows XP users will find the same function on the Desktop tab instead… just choose Center from the Position box.

Setup a Shortcut to Silently Rotate

Since you likely won’t want to rotate the wallpaper manually yourself, you can create a shortcut to the executable file, and then add the following options at the end of the Target box:

-random -silent

This will make the wallpaper changer run without prompting or displaying errors, perfect for running at startup…

At this point we have a shortcut that you can double-click to choose a random xkcd wallpaper.

If you want this to run at startup, you can type shell:startup into the explorer location bar and drag the shortcut in:

And now you’ll get a random wallpaper each time you login. If you don’t like that one, just click the shortcut again. This comic actually made me laugh out loud…

Note: XKCD is a wonderful comic, but the topics aren’t geared at children. Just throwing the disclaimer out there…

Download xkcd Wallpaper Randomizer from apathysketchpad.com

Visit the xkcd webcomic