Bing Daily

Bing Image of the Day for your Cinnamon desktop — without pinging Microsoft.

---

What it does

bing-daily is a Cinnamon panel applet that sets your desktop wallpaper to the Bing Image of the Day on a schedule you control. It keeps a local history of past images so you can browse backwards, and runs entirely in user-space with no root required.

The key difference from every other Bing wallpaper tool: it never contacts Microsoft. Images are fetched exclusively via Peapix, a clean third-party API. No tracking. No telemetry. No bing.com.

---

Screenshots

---

Features

• 🖼 Daily wallpaper — fetches and sets the Bing Image of the Day automatically
• 🌍 Region selection — pick your region for locally relevant images and holidays
• 📅 Flexible frequency — daily, weekly, or monthly updates
• 🕐 Custom update time — set the exact time of day for refresh
• 🕘 Image history — navigate backwards and forwards through past wallpapers
• 📦 Populate History — bulk-download the last ~8 days in one click (great for fresh installs)
• 🗑️ Clear All Images — wipe the local cache from the menu
• 📶 Network reconnect refresh — automatically refreshes when you connect to a new network
• 🔒 Privacy first — zero Microsoft connections, zero telemetry
• ⚙️ systemd timer — reliable scheduling, no polling loops
• 🐍 Zero dependencies — Python 3 stdlib only, nothing to pip install
• 🎨 Symbolic icon — follows your panel theme, light or dark

---

Compatibility

Linux Mint	Cinnamon	Status
21.x	5.4, 5.6	✅ Supported
22.x	6.0, 6.2, 6.4, 6.6	✅ Supported

---

Install

git clone https://github.com/keithdriscoll/bing-daily.git
cd bing-daily
bash install.sh

Then add the applet to your panel:

1. Right-click your Cinnamon panel → Applets
2. Find Bing Daily → click +
3. Click Done

---

Architecture

The applet is intentionally split into two layers:

applet.js          — Cinnamon UI only. Menu, settings, notifications.
                     Zero network code.

engine/
  bing_engine.py   — All logic. Fetches images, manages history,
                     sets wallpaper via gsettings. Runs as subprocess.
                     Testable standalone without Cinnamon.

This separation means:

• No Soup2/Soup3 compatibility issues — works identically on Cinnamon 5.x and 6.x
• Fully testable — run the engine from a terminal without Cinnamon running
• Transparent — every action logged to ~/.cache/bing-daily/log.txt

---

Manual Engine Commands

ENGINE=~/.local/share/cinnamon/applets/bing-daily@keithdriscoll.nyc/engine/bing_engine.py

# Download today's wallpaper and set it
python3 $ENGINE refresh

# Show info about the current image
python3 $ENGINE info

# Navigate history
python3 $ENGINE next   # newer image
python3 $ENGINE prev   # older image

# Bulk-download the last ~8 days of images
python3 $ENGINE populate

# Clear all cached images
python3 $ENGINE clear

# Open current image in your viewer
python3 $ENGINE open

---

Privacy

Built privacy-first from day one:

What	Status
Connects to bing.com	❌ Never
Telemetry or analytics	❌ Never
Tracking parameters logged	❌ Stripped before logging
Config file permissions	✅ chmod 600
Data stored locally	✅ ~/.cache/bing-daily/ only
External pip dependencies	❌ None

Image source: Peapix API — a clean, privacy-respecting aggregator.

---

Settings

Setting	Default	Description
Auto-update	On	Enable/disable automatic refresh
Frequency	Daily	Daily, Weekly, or Monthly
Update time	08:00	Time of day for refresh
Region	Global	Affects local holidays and cultural imagery
History limit	30 images	How many wallpapers to keep on disk

Region & Holidays

Bing curates daily images around local events, national holidays, and cultural moments. Selecting your region means you'll see imagery that's actually relevant — July 4th fireworks for the US, Cherry Blossom season for Japan, Diwali celebrations for India. The Global option uses Bing's worldwide pick with no regional bias.

---

File Locations

Path	Contents
~/.local/share/cinnamon/applets/bing-daily@keithdriscoll.nyc/	Applet
~/.cache/bing-daily/	Images + history
~/.cache/bing-daily/log.txt	Log file
~/.config/bing-daily/config.json	Settings (chmod 600)
~/.config/systemd/user/bing-daily.*	systemd units

---

Uninstall

systemctl --user disable --now bing-daily.timer
rm ~/.config/systemd/user/bing-daily.{service,timer}
systemctl --user daemon-reload
rm -rf ~/.local/share/cinnamon/applets/bing-daily@keithdriscoll.nyc

# Optional: remove cached images
rm -rf ~/.cache/bing-daily

---

Contributing

PRs welcome. The engine (bing_engine.py) is intentionally standalone — if you want to add a new image source or feature, start there.

---

License

MIT — © 2026 Keith Driscoll · keithdriscoll.nyc