Inspired by Life is Strange, Arcadia Weather brings the view over Arcadia Bay to your Windows desktop. The sky changes with your local weather and time of day, from daylight and sunset to a quiet night or a storm.
Just choose your location and leave it on Automatic. Or pick your favorite scene and keep it there. You can have the sunset for a little longer.
- Five animated scenes from Arcadia Bay, with the original video audio.
- Automatic weather and time of day. Checks your local weather every five minutes and chooses the matching scene.
- Manual scene selection. Keep any scene until you switch back to Automatic or restart the app.
- Location search. Search for a city or district, enter coordinates, or let Windows fill them with Use my location.
- Wallpaper preview and playback controls. Pause, resume, mute, and adjust the volume from the main page.
- Light and dark mode. Your choice is saved immediately and remembered next time. You can also follow the Windows theme.
- Display settings. Choose a monitor, Fill or Fit, and Celsius or Fahrenheit.
- Runs in the tray. Optional Windows startup and automatic pausing while another fullscreen app covers the selected display.
- One EXE when packaged. The videos, .NET runtime, and video player are bundled together. No separate VLC installation or video setup.
These are stills from the five wallpaper scenes. In the app, each one plays as a looping video.
| Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Daylight | Cloudy | Night | Evening | Rain & storm |
Automatic follows the weather at your selected location. Rain wins over everything, including night. Clouds replace daylight and evening, but leave the night scene alone.
| Condition | Scene |
|---|---|
| Rain, drizzle, showers, or thunderstorms at any hour | Day 5 |
| Night without rain, even if it is cloudy | Day 3 |
| Cloudy morning, afternoon, or evening without rain | Day 2 |
| Clear evening | Day 4 |
| Clear morning or afternoon | Day 1 |
Day starts at sunrise, evening starts one hour before sunset, and night starts 30 minutes after sunset, using your location's timezone. The weather refreshes every five minutes, as well as at startup and after waking.
For example, a cloudy afternoon shows Day 2. Once night arrives, it switches to Day 3. If rain starts, Day 5 takes over.
If you just wanna keep the evening view, click Day 4. That puts the app in Manual, where the weather won't change your choice. Select Automatic when you want it to follow the weather again. A new app session starts in Automatic.
You'll need Windows 10 or 11, x64. If you already have the packaged ArcadiaWeather.exe, open it directly. To make the EXE from this repository, follow Build from Source below.
- Open ArcadiaWeather.exe. The default location is Bangkok, Thailand.
- Go to Settings → Location and search for your city or district. You can also enter latitude and longitude, or click Use my location to ask Windows for your position.
- Check the location and timezone, then click Save settings.
- Return to Wallpaper and leave Automatic on, or choose one of the five scenes.
- Use the playback controls to pause or turn on the sound. Audio is muted by default on a fresh install.
- In Settings → Display, choose your monitor and how the wallpaper fits. In Settings → Windows, choose whether to start with Windows or pause during fullscreen apps.
The Dark mode switch saves as soon as you use it. Other settings need Save settings. Windows location access is a one-time lookup when you press the button; the app doesn't track your position in the background.
Closing the window keeps the wallpaper running in the tray. Double-click the butterfly tray icon to reopen it, or choose Exit from its menu to stop the app and reveal your normal Windows background.
- C# / .NET 10 / WPF — Windows interface and application logic.
- LibVLCSharp / libVLC — wallpaper video and audio playback.
- Win32 — desktop wallpaper hosting, tray integration, and window controls.
- Open-Meteo — weather, sunrise/sunset, timezone lookup, and city search.
- HTML / CSS / JavaScript — the editable UI prototypes included in the repository.
You'll need Windows x64, a .NET 10 SDK, and PowerShell.
The repository includes the app source, tests, scene images, preview clips, and HTML prototypes. The five full-length videos and generated EXE are not included in Git. Supply the original videos separately with these filenames:
Arcadia Bay Day 1 Sound AAC.mp4
Arcadia Bay Day 2 Sound AAC.mp4
Arcadia Bay Day 3 Sound AAC.mp4
Arcadia Bay Day 4 Sound AAC.mp4
Arcadia Bay Day 5 Sound AAC.mp4
Clone the project and point the build at that folder:
git clone https://github.com/Ikkyuuuu/Arcadia-Weather.git
cd Arcadia-Weather
.\build.ps1 -VideoSource "C:\path\to\the\five\videos" -SingleExeThis runs the tests and creates:
dist/ArcadiaWeather-1.5.3-single/ArcadiaWeather.exe
That EXE contains everything needed to run the app. -VideoSource is only used while building; people running the finished app don't need to choose any video paths.
For test commands, packaging options, and implementation details, see the development guide.
- The bundled EXE is about 2 GB. First launch needs roughly another 2 GB for extracted files and may take a little longer. Later launches reuse that cache.
- Put the EXE where you want to keep it before enabling Start with Windows. Exit an older running version from the tray before opening a new one.
- Weather and city search need internet. Videos play offline; if weather becomes unavailable, the app uses recent cached data for up to an hour, then follows the time of day.
- Weather comes from model estimates, so a five-minute check doesn't mean a new observation every time.
- Wallpaper playback currently targets one selected monitor. It pauses on lock or sleep, and can pause for fullscreen apps.
- Settings and logs stay in
%LOCALAPPDATA%\ArcadiaWeather. The app has no account system or analytics.
Inspiration & footage : Life is Strange / Arcadia Bay
Weather & location search : Open-Meteo
Video playback : LibVLCSharp / VideoLAN
This is an unofficial fan project. Life is Strange artwork and footage belong to their respective rights holders. The application source is available under the MIT license; third-party media and libraries retain their own terms. See third-party notices for credits and licenses.