See a picture of the community around you, right on your Mac desktop. Satellite Eyes is a tiny Mac download that sits in your tray, determines your current location and puts a map of your choosing on the desktop. Whether you want a minimalist outline, a satellite image or even a watercolor, it doesn't matter - Satellite Eyes can deliver, and will automatically move every time you do.

Context is everything, and while seeing a bird's eye view of your current location every time you look at your desktop won't tell you everything you need to know about the place you currently are, it will help you passively visualize the streets and scenes nearby. Whether you're at home or your favorite coffee shop, you might notice something cool nearby you previously missed. Or it might just look really, really cool. Whatever it is you want from a desktop full of maps, Satellite Eye delivers.

You'll need to be connected to the Internet, of course, and allow Satellite Eyes to access your location using OS X's Location Services.

How It Looks

Let's start by showing you a couple of ways this could look. Here's a GPS wallpaper based on the satellite images from Bing:

gps wallpaper

Anyone who has used a map service should be familiar with this sort of thing. If you haven't, I'm sure I just blew your mind.

Do you want something prettier? Thanks to Stamen Design there are a wide variety of map styles to check out, some more artistic then useful. For example, this cool watercolor map:

gps wallpapers desktop

It may be harder to work out details, but it is a beautiful wallpaper based on your location – and that's just cool.

If you like this map you should check out map2image, a web app that allows you to download pictures like this on any computer.

There are other styles, most of which can be seen at map2image, so be sure to check that out if you're curious – or just download Satellite Eyes.

How To Configure

As is the case with so many apps, Satellite Eyes is configured from the Mac's Menu Bar. Click its icon to find the options:

gps wallpapers desktop

From here you can find the preferences. You can easily set Satellite Eyes to start at boot, if you want, and you can configure how the map looks:

gps wallpapers desktop

You can also tweak the zoom of the maps. Whether you want to see your neighborhood, city or region this app's got you covered. You can also apply some effects to your maps, so be sure to play with that if you're interested.

gps wallpaper

Download Satellite Eyes

Are you ready to download the app? Head to Satellite Eyes for the download, along with instructions.

Are you looking for more cool GPS wallpaper tweaks? Here's a few other articles that might be worth your time:

Be sure to let us know what you think about Satellite Eyes in the comments below, alongside any other cool wallpaper apps and hacks you might know about. Thanks, and continue being awesome.