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Choosing Cameras

Choose a camera in the menu bar menu (Camera, or the display's name with several displays) or in Settings ▸ Displays. Choose None for your normal wallpaper. PanoPaper never changes your wallpaper: it plays the video in front of it, below your desktop icons and widgets, so None, 'Pause Wallpaper' and quitting always bring it back exactly as it was.

A camera for each Space

In the Web Edition, a camera you choose is for the Space you are looking at. Every Space - on every display - keeps its own camera, and a Space without one shows your normal wallpaper. Switch Spaces and the video slides in with its Space.

So you can keep the driveway on one desktop and the back yard on the next, and a Space for focused work with no video at all.

When you remove a Space in Mission Control, PanoPaper forgets its camera.

A camera for each display

In the App Store Edition, each display shows one camera on all of its Spaces.

Several displays

Each display has its own camera; the menu bar menu has a camera menu for each, named after the display. Two displays can show the same camera; at the same quality, PanoPaper fetches its video only once.

A display remembers its cameras while it is disconnected: plug it in again and the video is back.

Stream quality

UniFi Protect sends each camera's video in up to three qualities. Choose one for each display in Settings ▸ Displays ▸ Quality: High (the default), Medium or Low, each with the resolution this camera sends. Quality is per display and applies to all of its Spaces.

High looks best on a large display. A lower quality uses less of your network and your Mac. On some cameras, Low is not the smallest of the three - check the resolutions.

Each camera's view is remembered

How you zoomed and moved a camera's picture - and for a 360° camera how it looks around - is kept for that camera, on that display (in the Web Edition: on that Space). Switch to another camera and back, and it looks the way you left it. See Zooming and Looking Around.

Mission Control

Mission Control draws each Space with your normal wallpaper, not the video. That is macOS: the video is back as soon as you pick a Space.

When the video pauses

PanoPaper only streams what someone can see. While your displays are asleep, the screen is locked, the screen saver runs, or another user is using the Mac, the video stops and the last picture stays. It picks up again when you come back.

A Space you leave keeps its video running for 20 seconds, so a quick look elsewhere costs nothing; after that it keeps its last picture until you return. Behind windows the video plays at 15 frames per second - see Behind Windows.

Messages on the wallpaper

While the video cannot show, a short message on the wallpaper says why:

• "Connecting to camera…" - on its way.
• "Reconnecting to camera…" - the video was interrupted; the line below says why. PanoPaper keeps trying on its own.
• "Waiting for NVR…" - PanoPaper is signing in to the camera's NVR.
• "Sign in to NVR in Settings to show this camera." - the NVR is not signed in, or signing in failed. Settings ▸ NVRs shows why - see Signing In to an NVR.
• "This camera is no longer on NVR." - it was removed from UniFi Protect. Choose another camera.

When you remove an NVR in Settings, displays and Spaces that showed its cameras go back to your normal wallpaper.