Screensavers aren’t really necessary anymore Should You Turn Your Screensaver Off? History & Modern Use of a Bug FixOnce an important feature to help prevent screen burn, screensavers are mostly used now to look pretty. How did they come to be and are they still worth using today? Read More , but operating systems keep offering them – and people keep making new ones. This is especially true on the Mac – in recent years a few stunning ones have showed up.

Let’s look at a bunch of screensavers you can download for your Mac. They may not be practical, but they sure look good.

Image Name: 40 Striking Free Mac Screensavers for OS X File Size: 600 x 600 pixels (19656 bytes). Free christmas screensavers for mac pictures 4. Mac Ultra HD Desktop Background Wallpapers for 4K & 8K UHD TV: Widescreen, Ultra Wide & Multi Display Desktops: Tablet & Smartphone Page 1.

Aerial: Beautiful Views of Major Cities

The new Apple TV Read Reviews of the New Apple TV, Google Balloons Around the World.. [Digest]Verdicts on the new Apple TV, Google forms a ring around the world, Facebook culls Candy Crush Saga invites, Snapchat speeds up, slows down, and rewinds your videos, and watching iPhones drown is oddly satisfying. Read More has a lot of great features, including voice search and a new app ecosystem. But there’s also one other minor addition: a screensaver featuring gorgeous aerial footage from around the world.

Stunning, right? It’s nice enough that programmer John Coates decided his Mac needed this same screensaver, so he went ahead and built that same screensaver. Aerial is a Mac screensaver that streams this beautiful footage directly from Apple – you’ll need an Internet connection for it to work (offline support is reportedly coming). But man, this footage is kind of worth it.

You can decide which footage does and doesn’t show, and whether each of your Mac’s multiple monitors 6 Essential Tools and Tips for Working With Multiple Mac MonitorsDo you use dual monitors on your Mac? Make your Mac multiple-monitor setup work better with these top tips and tricks. Read More show the same or different footage. If you want people who walk by your computer to say “wow”, install this one – it’ll work. Even better: Apple keeps adding new footage, which this screensaver will find for you, so you’ll be surprised by new things in the future.

Electric Sheep: Mind Blowing, Evolving Animations

If you prefer abstractions to reality, this is an evolving psychedelic collaborative art project that’s also a screensaver. Basically, you’ll see a bunch of amazing computer generated imagery like this:

Individual sequences are called “sheep”, and you can actually vote on them using your arrow keys: up if you like it, down if you don’t. Over time the project will combine aspects from upvoted sheep to form new ones, which in theory will result in things that people like. It’s fun to participate in, and looks great.

Saver.is (Pay What You Want): Geometric Patterns Galore

Let’s head back to the domain of abstraction, shall we? Saver.is stacks what appear to be paper cutouts on top of each other, creating patterns as it goes. Sometimes there are shapes, sometimes there are words, sometimes it’s just patterns, but it’s always pleasant to look at.

You can pick between a bunch of different color schemes, and which directions the cutouts come from. There are 340 different stencils and 19 color schemes to choose from, and the project uses a pay-what-you-want funding model.

Video Screen Saver ($4): Use Any Video as Your Screen Saver

If you like the idea of the Aerial screensaver, but want to pick your own footage, Video Screen Saver is the only thing I found that promises to play your videos as a screensaver. I haven’t personally found a use for it myself, and reviewers complain about multi-monitor support, but if you want to set a video to be your screensaver it’s probably your best bet.

Clear Day [No Longer Available]

There are a lot of great Mac weather apps The 7 Best Mac Weather AppsHere are the best weather apps for Mac, allowing you to check the current conditions right from your menu bar. Read More out there, including at least one snarky weather robot CARROT is Your Snarky Personal Weather Robot for Mac & iPhoneA sarcastic robot, with little regard for humanity, working as your personal weather forecaster? That's interesting. Read More , but if you want a weather screensaver Clear Day is your best bet. This screensaver shows you the world, and what the weather’s like all over it. Pick a few cities and the screensaver will rotate between them, showing you where a given city is and what the weather is like over there.

What Are Your Favorite Mac Screensavers?

Your Mac actually comes with some pretty great screensavers by default. There are several designed to show off your photo collection, including one that puts them all into frames. There’s one that shows you the word of the day, and another you can use to see the headlines from any RSS feed.

D&d beyond. You can access and customize them by heading to System Preferences > Desktop & Screensaver — you might find something worth using.

Remember: there are many creative ways to use screensaver The 10 Creative Ways to Use a Screensaver Read More , and you can even use some of these screensavers as live wallpaper for your Mac Live Wallpaper For Mac? It's Easier Than You ThinkGet animated wallpaper for your Mac. It's beautiful, useless, and fun. Read More if you’re willing to work at it.

But now I want to hear from you: what are your favorite Mac screensavers? Sniper elite v2 serial key. Let’s compile some more stunning ones in the comments below – I’m looking forward to it.

While the hype about screensavers has certainly died down, mostly due to iOS coolness, people still use them. I agree, they’re wasteful, but still nice to look at. Yesterday, internet superstar @SteveStreza asked his followers for screensaver recommendations. I tuned in to his mentions, and then did some digging around on the interwebs, and here’s a few that will definitely keep your screen occupied. All of these have been tested on Snow Leopard.

Header image via 1ncemore.

Flip Clock

SA writer Nick Wood (@gogocosmonaut) recommended this beautiful FlipClock by falseone. Unfortunately, the original link was dead. Wood was gracious enough to provide us with the .qtz file (which you drop into your MacHD » Library » Screensavers folder). I hope I’m not doing something wrong here.

Update: Here’s a 24 hour version, thanks to Jeremy Callan. /Via

Pic by Vince Walter

Fliqlo

Turns out there’s another flipclock screensaver that’s not so ‘designed’, called Fliqlo. Very subtle, traditional, and perfect on your brand new iMac. Some say this has problems on Snow Leopard, but it worked fine for me.

Fantastic shot by our buddy Johan Brook.

App Wall

For those who loved the App Wall at WWDC, the AppWall screensaver will pull the icons of the top selling apps on the App Store and flush them on your screen. The result is much like the iTunes artwork screenie, except with app icons. My only complaint would be the apps switch a little too fast, and related to that, it way too much CPU to get the job done.

Word Clock

While I’m at it, I thought why not recommend the Word Clock screensaver. It’s a wall of words, the combination of which can spell out the exact time, down to the second. The result of which is extremely cool. In fact this also comes in a universal iOS app so you can have all your Apple products have the same clock (kind of wasteful though).

Word Clock set in Arabic looks stunning; pic by MacSaudi

Polar Clock

I don’t need to remind you about the Polar Clock screensaver, now do I? An intriguing circular bar clock, that captivates the minds of anyone who gazes upon it. Truly one of the best.

Time Machine

There’s the Time Machine screensaver, which was probably more relevant around the time Leopard was just released. But it’s still pretty cool, especially if you use the RSS version.

Fenetres Volantes

There’s one last one, which is a little dated (from 2006), but it continues to intrigue the hell out of me. Fenêtres volantes, the screensaver that makes your desktop windows flutter around in 3D space, and then fly back when you need them. It uses some CPU, and the anti-aliasing is a bit of a bother, but it’s still very cool to look at. The original site has disappeared, so you can download it from a third party server.

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