Hello, I would like to change my folder backgrounds every couple of minutes like a slideshow. is it possible to set a new background image via script/command line or tell dopus to reload the current image from disk? The only way i found is closing dopus completely and then replacing the current image on disk with a new one and then start up dopus again but that is not very practical, i need to tell dopus to reload the current background from disk or set a new one while it is running.
There isn't a way to do that, at least at the moment. The way background images currently work, they'd all need to be defined in advance. (Something we're thinking about changing, but not sure if/when or exactly how yet.)
Any update on this?
No. it's not something that will change in the near future.
Is this now possible in Dopus 13?
Opus 13 has commands to:
-
Change the file display background color for the current tab:
Go BACKGROUNDCOLOR=#e0e0ff
(That may also be in Opus 12; not sure when we added it.) -
Load themes:
Prefs THEMENAME="My Theme" THEMELOAD=images
For images, you could use a theme. Those can be created via Preferences / Colors and Fonts / Themes, and will load/save the images under Preferences / Colors and Fonts / Images.
That would require one theme per image. (The themes are really .zip files, if you rename them, which means you could create one theme and then copy it and replace the image in each of the copies.)
That should work well if there are only a handful of images. If you have hundreds of images, making themes for all of them would be a pain.
If you want to change the image by just replacing the image file, without any themes or config backups, the only way to do that currently (other than restarting the program) is to toggle Dark Mode twice, so all the cosmetic settings are loaded.
We can add a command which refreshes the images from disk if you need that.
Thanks for replying Leo, I have done some testing with the demo using your suggestions:
Toggling dark mode is simple enough but i don't like the whole UI noticeably refreshing since my goal is to swap the background images on an interval automatically without wanting disrupting my workflow with a "flashing" UI.
Switching themes is working pretty nice because it lets me only switch the background image but that means i would have to code something that swaps out the image in the theme file since i do plan to use lots of random images as backgrounds.
Honestly If you could add a simple command that just reloads the current image under Preferences / Colors and Fonts / Images - "File display background" from the disk or even better give me also the option to set a new image path that would be perfect.
I have not bought v13 yet but this feature alone would make the upgrade well worth it for me. 
We can definitely add that.
We have a lot of feedback to work through at the moment, but I'll add it to the list. It should be fairly quick and simple to do, so we should be able to add it once the most urgent stuff is done.
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I hate to ask but any update on this?
Not so far, but it's still on our list.
+1 on slideshow background feature (in prefs not scripting)
+1 on video background feature
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We've added the Set BACKGROUNDIMAGE command in 13.6.8.
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Thank you this is so much easier now.
The cherry on top would be if the already existing transition animations could be applied to background changes (zoom/slide/cross-fade etc.) with a transition duration. Let's say i want it to fade the old background image to the new one for 2 seconds instead of having it abruptly change.
We'll add a cross-fade effect in the next update. (Other transition effects only work on the file display, but cross-fade can work across the whole Lister).
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It looks really smooth now with the cross-fade effect, cheers!
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