This one’s a bit more involved than my usual blog posts, so I made it a tutorial… because I can.

Description

• Set a different desktop background based on the current weather at your location (queries a free weather API every 5 minutes by default).

Explanation

• The way the script works is quite simple: it curls the wttr.in weather API using the command curl --silent wttr.in?format="%C".
• The API responds with a single line of output describing the weather at your current location, for example:

[sam@samantha] λ curl --silent wttr.in?format="%C"
Light Rain

• Based on this output, the script looks in a directory for an image with a filename matching the weather condition, e.g. ~/Pictures/weather-wallpapers/Light Rain.jpg and then sets this as the wallpaper.
• This script simply has to be added as a cron job to execute every 5 minutes (or however often you want to query for weather updates).

Setup & Code

• Setup requires 3 steps:
  1. Create a weather-wallpapers/ folder and populate it with your desired background images for each weather condition.
  2. Save the weather script somewhere.
  3. Add a cron job to run the script every 5 minutes.

1. Create weather-wallpapers/ folder

• Create a folder and fill it with your desired wallpapers for each weather condition.
• If your wallpaper ever goes black, that’s because you don’t have an image file for the current weather condition, simply run curl --silent wttr.in?format="%C" and add a new image file with the same name as the command’s output.
• Note: If you’re lazy like me, you can always duplicate your images for similar weather conditions, e.g. I have two identical images, Light Rain.jpg, and Light Rain, Rain Shower.jpg. Here’s a few file names to get you started:

2. Save the weather script somewhere

• Save the following weather script somewhere, I saved it as ~/.rc/weather:
• Note: the last line will need to be edited to point to your weather-wallpapers/ folder.

#!/bin/bash

# Get the DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS environment variable which gsettings needs but cron by default runs without
PID=$(pgrep gnome-session | tail -n1)
export DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=$(grep -z DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS /proc/$PID/environ|cut -d= -f2-)

 # Get the current weather in your location
CUR_WEATHER=$(curl --silent wttr.in?format="%C")

# Look in a folder 'weather-wallpapers' for an image with a filename corresponding to the weather condition
# and sets that as the desktop background. NOTE: The path below will need to be updated to be edited to point to your folder.
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background picture-uri "file:///home/sam/Pictures/weather-wallpapers/${CUR_WEATHER}.jpg"

• To be safe I would also recommend running chmod +x ~/.rc/weather on the script file.

3. Add the script as a cron job

• To schedule the script to run periodically, simply edit your crontab (crontab -e), then append the line below to the end of the file.
• Note: Adjust the path to point to wherever you saved your weather script.

*/5 * * * * /home/sam/.rc/weather # Adjust the '5' to however often you want to query for weather updates.

• You may have to restart cron for the job to be added: service cron restart.
• Note: The above cron jobs will execute every 5th minute of the hour, i.e. 12:00, 12:05, 12:15 etc.

Done! 😎