Mac OS X Screensavers

by Alexander Thomas (aka Dr. Lex)
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It puzzles many people why there is no such thing in OS X as an “ultra-basic” screensaver. The simplest built-in screensaver displays the Apple logo together with the computer name, jumping around on the screen. For some people that may already be too distracting. True, one can make an image filled with black and use this with the ‘Pictures’ screen saver, but that is a hassle. Therefore I created…

Black Screen

The most effective screen saver you've ever seen. Guess what: it just makes the screen turn black! Great if you don't want your screen to burn in neither waste precious processor cycles with some fancy animation which distracts you from your work. Now compatible with the latest OS X versions so you can harness the power of 64-bit processing to display absolutely nothing on your screen.

I do not provide source code because there isn't really any. This was basically created by making a new ‘Screensaver’ project in XCode, entering a name and version, and building it.

Download Black Screen 2.0 (ZIP archive) (64bit binary for Intel Macs, recent OS X versions, not sure what the lowest supported version is, certainly works in 10.14)
Download Black Screen 1.1 (ZIP archive) (32/64bit binary for Intel Macs, OS X 10.6 or newer)
Download Black Screen 1.0.1 (ZIP archive) (Universal binary for PPC/Intel Macs, OS X 10.4.x through 10.5.x)
Download Black Screen 1.0.0 (StuffIt archive) (For older Macs)

The Dot

If a black screen is somewhat too minimalistic for you but you still don't like dazzling images dancing across the screen, this screensaver may be a better choice: it displays just a “dot” which runs across the screen line by line. The size, shape, speed and color of the “dot” can be set to your taste (you will want to increase the dot size on a high-resolution monitor, as the default size is small). This may look like a very simple program and it is, but being one of my first experiments in OS X programming, I learnt a lot about programming Cocoa applications while making it. Therefore for the interested, the source code is also available and can be a good starting point for more elaborate screensavers.

Note: does not work in recent OS X versions (like 10.14). I have some (low-priority) plans to fix this, so check this page occasionally if you are craving for a single dot crawling across your screen.

Download The Dot 1.1 (ZIP archive) (32/64bit binary for Intel Macs, OS X 10.6 or newer)
Download The Dot 1.0.1 (ZIP archive) (Universal binary for PPC/Intel Macs, OS X 10.4.x through 10.5.x)
Download The Dot 1.0.0 (StuffIt archive) (For older Macs)
Download the source code (ZIP archive)

Note: please don't waste your and my time by mailing me how lame these screensavers are. They are designed to be lame. Duh ;)