Fractal Wallpaper

An offline, GPU-accelerated fractal art generator for iPhone & iPad. Watch fractals grow from a single seed, tune colour and motion, then save the artwork as a wallpaper — all rendered on-device with Metal, with zero network access.

Overview

Fractal Wallpaper turns escape-time fractal mathematics into living artwork. Type a seed phrase (or hit Surprise), and the app animates a fractal as it "grows" from a single point — iteration by iteration — with an optional cinematic zoom-in. Pinch to explore the infinite detail, recolour with curated palettes, and set the result as your home- or lock-screen wallpaper.

Everything happens locally: the fractals are computed in a Metal compute/shader pipeline on the device's GPU and are never transmitted off the device. No account, no tracking, no network calls.

Features

• 🌀 Six fractal families — Mandelbrot, Julia, Burning Ship, Tricorn, Phoenix, and Celtic.
• 🌱 Growth animation — fractals form from a single seed over a tunable number of iterations, with adjustable speed and a "cinematic zoom-in" framing mode.
• 🎨 Eight colour palettes — Aurora, Inferno, Ocean, Neon, Sunset, Viridis, Candy, and Mono.
• 🔤 Seed phrases — type any text (e.g. nebula) to deterministically derive a fractal, or roll Surprise for a random one.
• 🔍 Pinch-to-zoom exploration of infinite fractal detail.
• 🖼️ Set as Wallpaper / Save / Share — export artwork straight to Photos with a built-in wallpaper guide.
• ⚙️ Live controls — simulation speed, max run time, zoom amount, and replay/stop.
• 📱 Universal — adaptive layouts for iPhone and iPad.
• 🔒 Privacy-first — no data collected, no tracking, fully offline (see PrivacyInfo.xcprivacy).

Tech Stack

Layer	Technology
Language	Swift 6.0 (strict concurrency)
UI	SwiftUI
Rendering	Metal (Fractals.metal compute/fragment shaders)
Architecture	MVVM (FractalViewModel driving Metal view)
Min. target	iOS / iPadOS 18.0
Project gen	XcodeGen (project.yml)
Photos	PhotoKit (NSPhotoLibraryAddUsageDescription)

Architecture

FractalApp/
├── App/              # App entry point (FractalApp.swift)
├── Models/           # FractalType, ColorPalette, FractalParameters, FractalPreset
├── Renderer/         # Metal: FractalRenderer, Fractals.metal, MetalFractalView
├── ViewModels/       # FractalViewModel (state + growth driver)
├── Views/            # SwiftUI screens: Home, Controls, Settings, About, Feedback, …
├── Utilities/        # SeedGenerator, FormationDriver, PhotoSaver, Theme, Constants
└── Resources/        # Assets.xcassets, PrivacyInfo.xcprivacy

The view model holds the FractalParameters (type, palette, seed point, zoom, iterations) and hands them to FractalRenderer, which dispatches the Metal shaders in Fractals.metal. The rawValue ordering of FractalType and ColorPalette is kept in sync with the shader's fractalValue() / paletteColor() switches.

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• macOS with Xcode 16+ (iOS 18 SDK)
• XcodeGen — brew install xcodegen
• A Metal-capable device or simulator

Build & Run

git clone https://github.com/alfredang/fractalapp.git
cd fractalapp

# Generate the Xcode project from project.yml
xcodegen generate

# Open and run
open FractalApp.xcodeproj

Select the FractalApp scheme and run on a simulator or device (⌘R).

The .xcodeproj is generated from project.yml and is intentionally git-ignored — run xcodegen generate after cloning.

Privacy

Fractal Wallpaper collects no data, performs no tracking, and makes no network requests. Photo Library access is requested only when you choose to save artwork. See the bundled privacy manifest.

Acknowledgements

Built by Alfred Ang at Tertiary Infotech Academy Pte Ltd.

License

© 2026 Tertiary Infotech Academy Pte Ltd. All rights reserved.