Windows 3.0 in 1990 was the first version of Microsoft Windows to feature support for wallpaper customization, and used the term 'wallpaper' for this feature. Mac OS 8 in 1997 was the first Macintosh version to include built-in support for using arbitrary images as desktop pictures, rather than small repeating patterns. The original Macintosh operating system only allowed a selection of 8×8-pixel binary-image tiled patterns the ability to use small color patterns was added in System 5 in 1987. Subsequently, a number of programs were released that added wallpaper support for additional image formats and other features, such as the xpmroot program (released in 1993 as part of fvwm) and the xv software (released in 1994). In 1989, a free software program called xgifroot was released that allowed an arbitrary color GIF image to be used as wallpaper, and in the same year the free xloadimage program was released which could display a variety of image formats (including color images in Sun Rasterfile format) as the desktop background.

The X Window System was one of the earliest systems to include support for an arbitrary image as wallpaper via the xsetroot program, which at least as early as the X10R3 release in 1985 could tile the screen with any solid color or any binary-image X BitMap file. Original computer wallpaper pattern, as used in Xerox's Officetalk and Star

Dynamic desktop wallpaper