Animated background made with this tool: a curve of green and cyan aurora light breaking into sparkling speckle on a dark sky
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Animated background maker: aurora light loops

Flowing light that drifts like the northern lights and breaks into fine sparkling speckle. Pick one of 128 looks or press Inspire, then export a seamless loop free up to 1080p, or embed it on your site. No signup.

Open the editorBrowse 128 looks

Make an animated background of flowing light: a glowing ribbon that drifts like the northern lights and dissolves into fine sparkling speckle. Pick one of 128 looks, change the shape, colors, lens and motion, and export a seamless MP4 or WebM loop or a still, free up to 1920x1080 (4K loops and 4K or 8K stills with Pro). Embeds of any look are free for commercial use, with no badge.

Looks to start from

Each clip was recorded with the generator and loops the way your export will. Click Use this look to open it in the editor, then make it yours.

How to make an animated aurora background

  1. Pick a look

    Open the Library and pick one of 128 looks in eight groups: Hero, Ambient, Vivid, Light, Lens, Spotlight, Shapes and Interactive. Search by name or shape, and save your own looks in the Saved tab. Shuffle keeps the look and gives you a new variation.

  2. Shape the light

    Choose one of 31 paths and how the light fills the frame: a ribbon, a curtain, a prism edge, an aura or echoes. Pick a palette or set 2 to 4 colors, then tune the speckle, glow, motion, a mask, a glass lens and the frame shape.

  3. Export

    Click Export and choose an MP4 or WebM loop or a PNG still, one of seven aspect ratios, a loop length from 4 to 20 seconds, 24, 30 or 60 fps, and a size. Free exports go up to 1920x1080 (1080p loops and 1,920 px stills); 4K loops and 4K or 8K stills come with Pro. Embed code for any look is free.

What makes a light background look alive

A hot core and a soft falloff. Real light is brightest where it is densest, so each ribbon has a near-white core that fades into its colors and then into a soft glow. Colors are blended in Oklab, a color space built around how we see, so a cyan to violet ramp stays bright and clean instead of turning grey in the middle.

A veil on one side. An aurora has a sharp lower edge and a long curtain of rays above it. The generator does the same: the light ends crisply on one side of the curve and trails off on the other, with fine rays that drift slowly along it. Flip the veil to the other side to make light fall, rise or glow inside a ring, or switch the field to Curtain to fill a whole side of the frame.

Speckle that follows the light. The light breaks up into a fine stipple of grains, dense at the core and thinning out with distance, in loose clumps. Each grain fades in and out on its own beat, so the sheet sparkles even when the light itself is calm, and a few brighter glints drift along the path.

It stays sharp at any size. Every grain, ray and speck is placed relative to the frame, not to pixels, so a 4K or 8K export shows the same picture as the preview, only with crisper speckle. Nothing is upscaled.

Picking the right export

  • Website hero: a 16:9 or 21:9 WebM at 1080p keeps the file small. Play it muted and looping behind your headline.
  • Desktop wallpaper: a free PNG still at 1,920 px, or 4K and 8K with Pro for very large or high density screens.
  • Reels, Stories and TikTok: choose 9:16. Upright paths like Column, Meander and Bolt fill a tall frame well.
  • Streams and videos: a free 1080p MP4 suits most streams; a 4K MP4 (Pro) holds up on big screens. Choose High quality if your platform compresses hard, or lower Film grain.
  • Social posts: 1:1 or 4:5 at 1080. A Ring, Triangle or Spiral from the Shapes group reads well there.

Embed it on your website

Want the light live on a page instead of a video file? Open Export, choose Code and copy an iframe, a script snippet or a React component that plays your look in the browser, with the pointer effects included. Free looks embed free for commercial use, with no badge and no watermark. Setup steps for popular website builders are on the animated website background page.

Tips for a better glow

  • Leave space. Light on a mostly dark frame looks brighter and deeper than light that fills it edge to edge.
  • Pick colors that sit near each other on the color wheel for a calm aurora, or add a warm stop to a cool ramp for a sunset glow.
  • Refraction above 60% turns the core into a rainbow fringe. It looks best with a thin line and low Glow.
  • For a crisp, grainy look, keep Glow low and raise Speckle. The speckle carries the light instead of a soft haze.
  • On pale backgrounds the light inks the paper in its own colors, so pick saturated mid tones from the Light group.
  • Slow Speed and low Wobble make a calm loop for websites. Higher values give a livelier, more energetic look.
  • Click Shuffle a few times. Each variation changes the curve and dust a little, and one will frame your content better.

More backgrounds and tools

For a still night sky full of stars, use the galaxy background generator. To turn a photo into a soft moving gradient, try image to gradient, or build one from scratch in Gradient Lab. You can also browse free gradient wallpapers or add film grain to any image with the grain texture generator.

Want finished files instead of making your own? Download ready-made MP4 clips from the Animated Backgrounds collection, or aurora stills from the Aurora collection. Both come with Backgrounds Supply Pro.

Embeds, VJ loops and Spotify Canvas

Explore more: aesthetic wallpapers, moving backgrounds, free gradient wallpapers, gradient backgrounds, cool backgrounds, free aesthetic backgrounds.

FAQs

Animated background maker questions: loops, sizes, formats and uses

  • Pick one of 128 looks from the Library, change the path, colors, speckle and motion until you like it, then click Export and choose MP4 or WebM, a loop length and a size. The light is drawn live in your browser, so every change shows straight away, and the video is rendered frame by frame at full size when you export. It takes a minute and needs no account or app.

  • Yes. Every look and every format is free up to 1920x1080 (1080p loops and 1,920 px stills), with no signup and no watermark, and embed code for any look is free with no badge. 4K loops and 4K or 8K stills come with Backgrounds Supply Pro. What you make is yours to use in personal and commercial work, such as websites, YouTube videos, streams, slides, apps and ads, with no attribution required.

  • Yes. Every moving part (the path, the colors, the rays, the speckle and the drifting dust) moves in whole cycles, and the clip holds a whole number of them, so the frame after the last one is exactly the first frame. Choose a loop length of 4, 6, 8, 12 or 20 seconds; Speed sets how many cycles fit in it.

  • Video loops come in 720p, 1080p or 4K at 24, 30 or 60 fps, with Balanced or High quality. PNG stills come in 1080p, 4K or 8K. 720p and 1080p are free; 4K loops and 4K or 8K stills come with Pro. Both work in seven aspect ratios: 16:9, 21:9, 3:2, 4:3, 1:1, 4:5 and 9:16. 4K video needs a browser that encodes frame by frame, as current Chrome and Edge do; older browsers record up to 1080p.

  • Not directly. The generator saves MP4 and WebM, because a GIF only holds 256 colors, so soft glows and fine speckle turn blotchy, and a GIF of the same clip is many times larger. Most places that play GIFs, such as websites, Discord, slides and editing apps, also play MP4. If you need a GIF, convert a short 720p MP4 export with any video to GIF converter.

  • Use WebM for a website, because it is usually the smallest file and plays in every modern browser. Use MP4 for everything else: video editors, Instagram, TikTok, Zoom, OBS, PowerPoint and Keynote all take it. The Export menu shows an estimated file size before you save, so you can compare.

  • Yes, with a wallpaper app. Windows and macOS only play video wallpapers through one, so export a 16:9 MP4 at 1080p (free) or 4K (Pro) and open it in Lively Wallpaper (free, Windows), Wallpaper Engine, or a video wallpaper app on a Mac. For a plain desktop picture with no app, export a PNG still instead: free at 1,920 px, or 4K and 8K with Pro.

  • Yes. Choose 9:16 and export an MP4 loop at 1080p (1080x1920, free). iPhones only animate Live Photos on the lock screen, so turn the MP4 into a Live Photo with a video to Live Photo app first, then set it from Photos. For a sharp still lock screen, export a 9:16 PNG at 1080x1920 free, or 4K and 8K with Pro. The same 9:16 MP4 works for Reels, Stories and TikTok.

  • Zoom accepts video virtual backgrounds as MP4 or MOV, so export a 16:9 MP4 at 1080p and add it under Settings, Backgrounds and effects. A calm look from the Ambient group with low Speed keeps attention on you. Teams uploads are still images for most accounts, so export a 16:9 PNG still for Teams, or add your name and logo in the Teams background maker.

  • Export a 16:9 or 21:9 WebM at 1080p, plus an MP4 as a fallback, then place it behind your content as a muted video set to autoplay, loop and playsinline, with a PNG still as the poster. The Hero looks leave space for a headline and slow Speed keeps the motion calm. Our guide to video backgrounds for websites has the HTML, and to play the look live instead of a video file, copy the embed code from the animated website background page.

  • Yes. Export a 1080p MP4 (free) or a 4K MP4 (Pro) at 30 or 60 fps and add it in OBS as a Media Source with Loop turned on, or drop it on a timeline in Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, Final Cut or CapCut. Choose High quality if the platform compresses hard. A seamless loop never shows a jump, so it can play behind a stream for hours.

  • Start from Polar veil or Borealis: green and cyan light with a long curtain of rays. The Drape path hangs the light from the top of the frame the way an aurora does, and the Curtain field fills one side with a grainy sheet of light. Keep Speed low for a slow drift. If you want finished aurora artwork instead, the Aurora collection has ready-made stills to download.

  • Raise Speckle for a denser stippled sparkle around the light, Reach to carry it further out, and Dust and glints for drifting specks with bright four point stars. Grain size makes the speckle finer or bolder. Moondust is a good start, and Refraction gives every speck its own rainbow color.

  • No. Follow, glow, ripple, liquid glass, swirl, parallax, disperse and attract only react to your mouse or finger in the preview and in embeds, so you can play with the light. Exports always render the look on its own, so the loop stays seamless. Use the Interactive looks to explore shapes, then export the one you like.

  • The Animated Backgrounds collection has finished MP4 clips for websites, apps, slides and screens, and the Aurora collection has ready-made aurora stills. Both unlock with Backgrounds Supply Pro, a one-time purchase that includes a commercial license and every other collection in the library. The loops you make in this generator stay free.