Other than memories of early computer gaming and getting interested in software development, I don’t have rose colored glasses for the Windows computing days of yore. Seeing where we are now and where we were, it’s hard for me to muster up much nostalgia. There are a few things, however, that do evoke that feeling. One of those things was After Dark screensavers. In particular, the Flying Toaster screensaver.

It exists on the web still in various forms for most platforms but seeing as how screensavers are a technology of the past, you don’t see them too much and most people don’t put much if any thought into them. Especially in todays world where so much computing happens on laptops and we simply shut the lid when we’re done.

I wanted this screensaver, however dumb that is. The problem being, I did not want to give up my beloved Padbury Clock Screensaver. I was also just generally curious what it takes to create a screensaver in 2018.

So I combined the two.

It was surprisingly easy, but with all things you can make it as difficult as you’d like. Many people opt to include SpriteKit in their screensaver to do simple animations. For what I was doing, that felt like unneeded complexity.

So I present to you, (probably) the stupidest thing I’ve ever developed.

Feel free to download it here, and if you’d like to modify it or just check out the source that can be done on the project’s Github repository.

Now if I can just get someone to recreate the Johnny Castaway screensaver for Mac, I’ll be living in 90s computing “bliss.”