Three years ago Cartogram started as a question about phone wallpapers: what if the backdrop to your day was a real place, rendered as a living map instead of a static photo? Half a million downloads and millions of generated wallpapers later, it comes to a second screen — the one most of us stare at longer than any other.
Cartogram for Mac is a living map of a place you love, quietly drifting behind your work from your menu bar. It's on the Mac App Store now.
Why a map, and not a video
Most "live wallpaper" apps for Mac are, underneath, video players — a beautiful loop on repeat. That's a fine thing to build, but it's not what we wanted. Cartogram renders real map data, natively, with Apple Maps: real terrain, real coastlines, real satellite imagery of the actual place you pick. It's not looping. It's not generic. It's Lisbon, or your hometown, or the coastline you grew up on — in 3D, day turning to night with the actual sun.
What's new for the Mac
- Golden Hour mode — your desktop chases sunrise and sunset around the planet, always resting on wherever the light is best right now.
- Flyover Cities — one click to a cinematic 3D camera over ten hand-tuned world landmarks, from Dublin's Docklands to Rio's Cristo Redentor.
- Native Apple Maps rendering — gorgeous satellite and 3D city imagery, day-to-night with the real sun, sipping power instead of draining it.
- Lives in the menu bar — no Dock icon, no window in the way. Pinned behind your icons, on every Space, every display.
It's built the way the rest of Cartogram is built: private by design (no accounts, no tracking, no ads — your places never leave your Mac), and native rather than a wrapped web view pretending to be an app. It respects your battery too: rendering pauses when the wallpaper is covered, slows on battery, and goes still under Low Power Mode — a wallpaper should never be the reason your Mac is warm.
The same idea, a new home
Cartogram for Mac is the desktop companion to the Android app half a million people have used to turn their phone into something more personal than a stock photo. Same idea. New home. More screen.
Get Cartogram for Mac on the Mac App Store →
And if it earns a place on your desktop, a rating on the App Store genuinely helps a small independent app find the next person who'd love it.
