Wallpaper engine only wants to work when it feels like it for the last few days

[Ferengi]

Whenever I try to open Wallaper engine it will either load up blank or load the names of wallpapers but with no images and really really really slowly download the images. I can't select any of them until ALL the images are downloaded. No other known issues on my PC or SSD. This started the other day but have used this program for months with no issues. So an update broke it? or what?

[Tim]

There were some severe issues with the Steam Workshop servers in the last couple of weeks, maybe that's what you meant with slow image downloads. When you say "it loads up blank", I would need to know what you mean by that exactly. Do you mean you are getting an absolutely empty window of Wallpaper Engine with nothing in it or do you mean the search results come up blank?

If the window is completely blank, the issue can be virtually always traced back to antivirus / firewall tools blocking Wallpaper Engine from being rendered. If you have any software like that installed, try to disable it completely.

[Ferengi]

Yeah it just comes up as a white page with the only visible thing being the top right X buttons. As for anti-virus stuff. I haven't added any new anti-virus stuff. Only been using malwarebytes and Win10's native anti-virus. Do you know if Steam download servers have also been wonky? or is it just the workshop? Because games have been downloading either really slowly as of late or not downloading at all. I keep having to clear the cache or else it keeps getting stuck on "Stopping"

I am reinstalling Wallpaper engine at the moment (I couldn't even run "Verify files" it would just stay at 0%) so I'll disable everything and try to launch it again.

[Tim]

Malwarebytes was the cause of some severe issues a while ago for some users, though it's been rather quiet as of late. The Steam Download servers were relatively stable from what I could tell, it mainly concerned the Steam Workshop servers responsible for searches and the Workshop item preview images, for example.

To me it still sounds like something is blocking Wallpaper Engine from working correctly, I would start by disabling Malwarebytes and see if the problems go away. You can also use our scan tool and see if it reports anything / share the log here for a second opinion:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/431960/discussions/1/3307213006836797842/