One day I was thinking “wouldn’t it be cool if my background would change to a random image every so often”. My first thought was to write a small app to do this so as part of my initial research I went for a Google, and what I found was actually stunning. John’s Background Switcher written by John Conners is a great app with a tonne of features. It can do a lot more than just change your background. I wont go into them all here but I’ll leave you the joy of discovering them.

John’s Background Switcher is highly recommended. Check it out.

Small Tip
One of the many features of this program is support for command line options. Which means instead of leaving the program running you can set it as a scheduled task so it will only execute at the specified intervals and exit when it’s done. This is handy as it means it won’t hog the memory of your machine when it’s not doing anything.

1) Run JBS and set up your switching options such as Flickr mode and whatever search criteria you like.
2) Go to settings > more settings and make sure “Start automatically when starting Windows” is unchecked.
3) Next exit and set up a scheduled task (Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Scheduled Tasks) however frequently you want JBS to switch and put in the following (making sure you set the folder to where you installed it):

“C:\Program Files\johnsadventures.com\John’s Background Switcher\BackgroundSwitcher.exe” /next

And you’re all set! When the scheduled task fires it’ll launch JBS, change the background and exit - all without showing any user interface. If you want to change the settings, just launch the program, change the settings and exit again. Easy!