Cron Script to Change Gnome Shell Wallpaper

I’ve recently upgraded to Fedora 21 and one of my extensions was not compatible with the updated Gnome Shell version.

I tried some variations but found that it seemed to be having a big negative impact on performance. A simpler option was required.

Here it is - a simple BASH script that you can Cron up to change your background

#!/usr/bin/env bash
PID=$(pgrep gnome-session)
export DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=$(grep -z DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS /proc/$PID/environ|cut -d= -f2-)
GSETTINGS_BACKEND=dconf 
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background picture-uri '"file://'/home/joseph/Pictures/Wallpapers/$(ls /home/joseph/Pictures/Wallpapers/ | shuf -n 1)'"'

Add this line to your crontab to change

*/5 * * * * /home/joseph/Pictures/Wallpapers/CHANGE.bash

Obviously you need to change paths etc but this works nicely