Hidden inside the developer version of an upcoming Windows 11 build (used mostly by testers), a user noticed a curious, new setting within the operating system: the option to set practically any video file as your desktop’s background.

Well, new in the same way that baggy jeans and Pearl Jam are new. They aged out of contemporary memory, became classic, and therefore became new again. This is a forgotten feature we saw almost two decades ago, in a previous version of Windows.

Windows DreamScene is back! Hidden in the latest Windows 11 Dev/Beta build (26×20.6690) is built in support for setting video files like .mp4 as your desktop background: pic.twitter.com/B4vdtfvqSc

— phantomofearth 🌳 (@phantomofearth) September 20, 2025

blast from the past

“Windows DreamScene is back! Hidden in the latest Windows 11 Dev/Beta build (26×20.6690) is built-in support for setting video files like .mp4 as your desktop background,” posted phantomofearth on X.com.

DreamScene, which phantomofearth refers to, was introduced with Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate users in 2007. It was nothing particularly fancy, although it was unusual. It just gave you the ability to set video files as your desktop’s wallpaper.

Instead of that staid, unmoving scene of a bunch of zebras on the Savannah or that NASA photo of Mercury, you could have a moving wallpaper. Ooh! Ahh! The future!

This was years before Apple introduced moving, “live” wallpapers on macOS Sequoia in 2023. Not many folks knew back then that Windows Vista had this capability. I sure didn’t, not until many, many years later, even though I was using Vista during its very brief run as the premiere version of Windows lasted an incredibly short 2007-2009.

It may have been because it was only for Vista Ultimate users and not for everybody. Or maybe it was because not that many people cared to set a video as their desktop wallpaper.

Have times changed? We’re more video-centric as a society than ever, but what do you think? Will it finally have its moment, or will it flop? Will another writer in 20 years be writing a retrospective about the brief time during which Microsoft brought back DreamScene to Windows 11, only for nobody to notice?

Let’s all find out together.