What's new in XScreenSaver 6.08
Oct 11, 2023
- macOS: Worked around a macOS 14.0 bug where savers would continue running invisibly in the background after un-blanking.
- macOS: Upgraded Sparkle (the “Check for Updates” library) for macOS 14.0 compatibility.
New in XScreenSaver 6.07 (Aug 30, 2023)
- New hacks, droste, skulloop, papercube and cubocteversion.
- xscreensaver-settings was sometimes turning off the DPMS checkbox.
- Log pid of caller of deactivate command, to give a hint about who is preventing the screen from blanking.
- recanim uses libffmpeg.
- Updates to sphereeversion.
- Added some new map sources to mapscroller.
- macOS: Worked around a macOS 13.4 bug where multi-head systems would fail to launch savers on some or all screens.
- Minimum compiler target is now ISO C99 instead of ANSI C89. Didn't want to rush into it.
- macOS, Android: Better looking thunbmail images.
- Various other minor bug fixes.
New in XScreenSaver 6.06 (Dec 12, 2022)
- New hack, hextrail.
- marbling works again.
- Adjusted some of the very old hacks, which were written when pixels were larger, to be more visible on today's higher rez displays.
- X11: More robust desktop image grabbing.
- X11: Various improvements to xscreensaver-settings.
- X11: Silence new new Perl warnings from xscreensaver-getimage-file.
- X11: Supports “Lock” messages from systemd, e.g. when logind.conf has “HandleLidSwitch=lock” instead of “suspend”.
New in XScreenSaver 6.05 (Dec 12, 2022)
- X11: Cope with dumb DPMS settings that existed pre-startup.
- X11: Silence new Perl warnings from xscreensaver-getimage-file.
- X11: Fix sonar pthreads crash on recent Pi systems.
- X11: Removed dependence on gdk-pixbuf-xlib-2.0.
- X11: GTK 3 is now required.
- macOS: Fixed the “Run savers on screens” preference in Random mode on multi-screen M1 systems.
- Retired thornbird, which is redundant with discrete.
New in XScreenSaver 6.04 (May 31, 2022)
- New hacks, nakagin and chompytower.
- Settings dialog shows diagnostics for bad image folders and feeds.
- URLs for imageDirectory can now point at archive.org collections.
- Sliders for various “Speed” preferences are easier to use.
- X11: Settings dialog shows saver description below embedded preview.
- X11: Better behavior when zero monitors are attached.
- X11: Improvements to inhibiting blanking while videos are playing: No longer necessary to hack GNOME and KDE to get them to not usurp the org.freedesktop.ScreenSaver endpoint.
- X11: unicrud displays character names.
- Updated webcollage.
New in XScreenSaver 6.03 (Feb 28, 2022)
- New hack, squirtorus.
- New hack, mapscroller (X11 and macOS only).
- sphereeversion now has corrugation-mode, and can evert the Earth.
- glplanet is higher resolution, and displays time zones.
- glslideshow displays relative pathnames again.
- iOS: Apple broke drag-to-rotate again. Fixed.
- macOS: fixed spurious error message in auto-update installer.
- X11: fixed sonar failing to ping on some Linux systems.
- X11: Touch-screens work.
- X11: Hold down Backspace to clear the whole password field.
New in XScreenSaver 6.02 (Oct 13, 2021)
- New hacks, marbling and binaryhorizon.
- atlantis behaviors are more random and lifelike.
- headroom is now Mask Headroom.
- X11: fontglide skips fonts that can't display ASCII.
- X11: Use asterisks in the password dialog if the system fonts don't have bullets in them.
- X11: “Disable Screen Saver” was behaving like “Blank Screen Only”.
- Android: These hacks work now: antinspect, barcode, energystream, fliptext, fontglide, glsnake, raverhoop, starwars, unicrud.
New in XScreenSaver 6.01 (Oct 13, 2021)
- X11: Properly disable the server's built-in screen saver.
- X11: The passwdTimeout option was being ignored.
- X11: The display of the unlock thermometer was weird.
- X11: Fixed password entry on old-school multi-screen setups (:0.1).
- X11: Worked around a KDE 5 compositor bug that caused the desktop to momentarily become visible when cycling.
- X11: Fixed possible high CPU usage in xscreensaver-systemd.
- X11: Fixed some spurious warnings in xscreensaver-text.
- X11: Warn when Wayland is in use, since it makes both screen saving and locking impossible.
New in XScreenSaver 6.00 (Apr 2, 2021)
- X11: Major refactor of the xscreensaver daemon for improved security, dividing it into three programs: xscreensaver, xscreensaver-gfx and xscreensaver-auth.
- X11: Dropped support for systems older than X11R7 (2009).
- X11: Renamed xscreensaver-demo to xscreensaver-settings.
- X11: Unlock dialog has user-selectable color schemes.
- X11: Everything uses XFreeType for fonts now.
- X11: Install a few custom fonts needed by some savers.
- X11: Fading works on systems without gamma (e.g. Raspberry Pi).
- X11: Use EGL instead of GLX when available.
- X11: xscreensaver-systemd now detects when a video player has inhibited screen blanking and then exits without uninhibiting.
- Improved GLSL and GLES3 support: Phong shading in etruscanvenus, hypertorus, klein, projectiveplane,`romanboy' and sphereeversion.
- Updates to cubicgrid.
- macOS: Added a Random XScreenSaver screen saver, which implements cycle mode, among other things.
- iOS: Also added cycle mode.
New in XScreenSaver 5.45 (Dec 9, 2020)
- New hacks, covid19, headroom, sphereeversion and beats.
- Shader updates to hypertorus.
- No more image-loading pause in glslideshow.
- BSOD supports GNOME.
- Image loaders support SVG.
- macOS: Fixed text loading on 10.15.
- X11: xscreensaver-systemd now allows video players to request that the screen not blank.
- X11: -log implies -verbose -no-capture-stderr.
- X11: Glade -> GtkBuilder.
- Android: These hacks work now: carousel, juggler3d, molecule, photopile, polyominoes.
- Various bug fixes.
New in XScreenSaver 5.44 (Mar 24, 2020)
- New hacks, gibson, etruscanvenus and scooter.
- BSOD supports Tivo and Nintendo.
- New color options in romanboy, projectiveplane, hypertorus and klein.
- macOS: Fixed “Use random screen saver” on macOS 10.15.
- iOS: Supports dark mode.
- iOS: Fixed image loading on iOS 13.
- iOS: Fixed rotation on iOS 13 (Apple incompatibly breaks rotation every two years as a matter of policy).
- Performance tweaks for eruption, fireworkx, halftone, halo, moire2, rd-bomb.
- X11: Always use $HOME/.xscreensaver, not getpwuid's directory.
- Various bug fixes.
New in XScreenSaver 5.43 (Jul 3, 2019)
- New hacks, GravityWell, DeepStars.
- GLPlanet now supports the Mercator projection.
- Bouncing Cow has mathematically ideal cows (spherical, frictionless).
- Foggy toasters.
- Unknown Pleasures can now use an image file as a clip mask.
- Updated webcollage for recent changes.
- macOS: Fixed BSOD fonts on UWQHD+ displays.
- X11: Added some sample unlock dialog color schemes to the .ad file.
- X11: On systemd systems, closing your laptop lid might actually lock your screen now, maybe.
- X11: 'sonar' can ping without being setuid by using setcap.
New in XScreenSaver 5.42 (Jan 8, 2019)
- macOS: Fixed Sparkle auto-updater.
New in XScreenSaver 5.41 (Jan 8, 2019)
- X11: Those new font-loading fallback heuristics work again. Oops.
- iOS, Android: Plugged many memory leaks at exit.
- New hack, handsy.
- Fixed noof from displaying minimalistically.
- Rewrote unknownpleasures to be faster, and a true waterfall graph.
- BSOD Solaris improved. DVD added.
- macOS: Upgraded Sparkle (the “Check for Updates” library).
- macOS: Screen saver settings work again on 10.14.
New in XScreenSaver 5.40 (Aug 13, 2018)
- New hacks, filmleader, vfeedback.
- New hack, glitchpeg (X11 and macOS only).
- GLPlanet blends between day and night maps at the dusk terminator.
- DymaxionMap can display arbitrary map images, and animate sunlight across the flattened globe.
- Tessellimage can draw either Delaunay or Voronoi tilings.
- XAnalogTV includes test cards.
- Android: These hacks work now: blitspin, bumps, cityflow, endgame, esper, flipscreen3d, gleidescope, glslideshow, jigglypuff, queens, tessellimage, xanalogtv, xmatrix, zoom.
New in XScreenSaver 5.39 (Apr 15, 2018)
- New hacks, 'razzledazzle', 'peepers', 'crumbler' and maze3d.
- More heuristics for using RSS feeds as image sources.
- Android: Image loading works.
- Built-in image assets are now PNG instead of XPM or XBM.
- X11: Better font-loading fallback heuristics on systems with a terrible selection of installed fonts.
- macOS: Retina display-related bug fixes.
New in XScreenSaver 5.38 (Dec 28, 2017)
- New hack, 'esper'.
- macOS: Support for Retina displays.
- X11: webcollage now works with ImageMagick instead of with pbmtools if webcollage-helper is not installed.
- 'bsod' now accepts Dunning-Krugerrands.
- Android: These hacks work now: 'anemone', 'anemotaxis', 'atlantis', 'bouboule', 'celtic', 'compass', 'crackberg', 'epicycle', 'fuzzyflakes', 'goop', 'kumppa' 'munch', 'pacman', 'polyominoes', 'slip'.
- Android: Thick lines work better for: 'anemone', 'anemotaxis', 'celtic', 'compass', 'deluxe', 'epicycle', 'fuzzyflakes', 'pacman'
- Android: Assorted performance improvements, especially for 'kumppa' and 'slip'.
- Android TV: Daydreams work.
- iOS: Tweaks for iPhone X.
- Lots of xlockmore-derived hacks now have animated erase routines.
- 'crystal' works properly on non-X11 systems.
- 'm6502' now includes 'texture.asm'.
- X11: Try harder to find sensible fonts for the password dialog.
New in XScreenSaver 5.37 (Jul 6, 2017)
- New hack, vigilance.
- Added Mac Software Update and VMware to bsod.
- OSX: Grabbing the desktop works again.
- OSX: Pinch to zoom.
- Android: Both Daydreams and Live Wallpapers are implemented.
- Updated webcollage for recent changes.
- Various bug fixes.
New in XScreenSaver 5.36 (Oct 12, 2016)
- New hacks, discoball, cubetwist, cubestack, splodesic and hexstrut.
- OSX: loading image files works in dymaxionmap, glplanet, lavalite, pulsar, gleidescope and extrusion.
- Several new programs in m6502.
- rotzoomer -mode circle.
- Better titles in photopile.
New in XScreenSaver 5.35 (May 30, 2016)
- New hacks, dymaxionmap, unicrud, energystream, raverhoop and hydrostat.
- Added Windows 10 to bsod.
- X11: ignore WM_USER_TIME property changes with days-old timestamps. Thanks, KDE.
- MacOS, iOS: Better fonts in BSOD and memscroller.
- MacOS 10.7 or later and iOS 6.0 or later are now required, since Xcode 6 can no longer build executables that work on older OSes.
- Many, many Android improvements.
- iOS: Fixed rotation to work with the new iOS 8+ API.
- X11: pong is now playable.
New in XScreenSaver 5.34 (Oct 26, 2015)
- Fixed a crash when hot-swapping monitors while locked.
- Fixed some incorrect output from xscreensaver-command -watch.
- Various OSX and iOS performance improvements.
New in XScreenSaver 5.33 (Jul 2, 2015)
- New hacks, splitflap and romanboy.
- Better detection of user activity on modern GNOME systems.
- Sonar now does asynchronous host name resolution.
- Improved Unicode support.
- Updated webcollage for recent changes.
- Various minor fixes.
New in XScreenSaver 5.32 (Nov 22, 2014)
- Fixed some X11 compilation problems.
- Fixed display size and shake gestures on iOS.
New in XScreenSaver 5.31 (Nov 18, 2014)
- New hacks, geodesicgears, binaryring and cityflow.
- UTF-8 text support (instead of only Latin1) and antialiased text on X11 with Xft (instead of only on OSX/iOS) in fontglide, noseguy, fliptext, starwars, and winduprobot. The other text-displaying hacks (apple2, phosphor, xmatrix, and gltext) also now accept UTF-8 input, though they convert it to Latin1 or ASCII.
- glplanet now has both day and night maps, and a sharp terminator.
- Fixed webcollage on OSX.
- Fixed a transparency glitch in winduprobot.
- lockward works on iOS.
- Text and image loading work on OSX 10.10.
- Rotation works properly on iOS 8.
- Added a search field on iOS.
- Preliminary, unfinished support for Android.
New in XScreenSaver 5.30 (Sep 11, 2014)
- New hack, winduprobot.
- Many improvements to lament, including Leviathan.
- Fixed the normals in flyingtoasters: shading is correct now.
- Implemented TEXTURE_GEN in GLES: flying toast is now toasted on iOS.
- Make cel-shading sort-of work in skytentacles on iOS.
- Fixed dragging-to-rotate on rotated iOS devices, I think.
- Dragging has inertia now.
- Most hacks respond to mouse-clicks, double-taps and swipes as meaning “do something different now”.
- Reworked OpenGL fonts.
- The OSX auto-update installer wasn't working. This time for sure?
- Various minor fixes.
New in XScreenSaver 5.29 (Jun 9, 2014)
- Downgraded to Xcode 5.0.2 to make it possible to build savers that will still run on 10.6 and 10.7. Sigh.
- Updated webcollage for recent changes.
New in XScreenSaver 5.28 (Jun 5, 2014)
- Fixed some compilation problems and intermittent crashes.
- Turned off the OSX 10.6 enable_gc hack. It didn't work.
New in XScreenSaver 5.27 (May 27, 2014)
- New hacks, tessellimage and projectiveplane.
- Added support for pthreads, because Dave Odell is a madman.
- Updated webcollage for recent changes.
- Minor iOS tweaks to the analogtv hacks.
- X11: Don't assume Suspend = 0 implies “No DPMS”.
- Minor updates to boxed and klein.
- Fixed possible crash in apple2, noseguy, xmatrix, shadebobs.
- Fixed possible crash in OSX preferences.
- OSX Performance improvements.
- Plugged some leaks.
New in XScreenSaver 5.26 (Dec 9, 2013)
- More auto-updater tweaks.
New in XScreenSaver 5.25 (Dec 9, 2013)
- Try harder to bypass Quarrantine and Gatekeeper in OSX installer.
- Some files were missing from the tarball.
New in XScreenSaver 5.24 (Dec 9, 2013)
- Added “Automatically check for updates” option on OSX.
- Updated feed-loading for recent Flickr changes.
- Updated webcollage for recent Google changes.
- Added Instagram and Bing as webcollage image sources.
- Updated to latest autoconf.
- Bug fixes.
New in XScreenSaver 5.23 (Nov 11, 2013)
- New hack, geodesic.
- iOS and OSX: huge XCopyArea performance improvements.
- More heuristics for using RSS feeds as image sources.
- Improved Wikipedia parser.
- Updated webcollage for recent Flickr changes.
- Added Android to bsod.
- OSX: Added a real installer.
- iOS and OSX: fixed a font-metrics bug.
- iOS: Fixed aspect ratio bug in non-rotating apps when launched in landscape mode.
- Made quasicrystal work on weak graphics cards.
- iOS: fixed ifs.
- Better compression on icons, plists and XML files: smaller distribution and installation footprint.
- Reverted that DEACTIVATE change. Bad idea.
- Phosphor now supports amber as well as green.
New in XScreenSaver 5.22 (Jul 17, 2013)
- New hacks, kaleidocycle, quasicrystal, unknownpleasures and hexadrop.
- Performance improvements for interference.
- Fixed possible crashes in apple2, maze, pacman, polyominoes, fireworkx, engine.
- Fix for bumps in 64 bit.
- Fixed preferences crash on old iOS 5 devices.
- Fixed ``Shake to Randomize''; display name of saver.
- Fixed weirdness with ``Frame Rate'' sliders on iOS.
- Fixed rotation problems with pacman, decayscreen.
- Better dragging in fluidballs.
- Ignore rotation in hacks that don't benefit from it.
- Ignore DEACTIVATE messages when locked, instead of popping up the password dialog box.
New in XScreenSaver 5.21 (Feb 5, 2013)
- Changed default text source from Twitter to Wikipedia, since Twitter now requires a login to get any feeds.
- New version of fireworkx.
- Minor fixes to distort, fontglide, xmatrix.
- New MacOS crash in bsod.
- New mode in lcdscrub.
New in XScreenSaver 5.20 (Oct 17, 2012)
- Support for iPhone 5 screen size.
- Fixed modifier key handing in Apple2.app and Phosphor.app on MacOS.
- Various minor bug fixes.
New in XScreenSaver 5.19 (Jul 27, 2012)
- MacOS 10.8.0 compatibility.
- iOS performance improvements.
New in XScreenSaver 5.18 (Jul 4, 2012)
- iOS responds to shake gestures to randomize.
- iOS can load images from your Photo Library.
- iOS has clickable Wikipedia links in Settings panels.
- Made pipes be ridiculously less efficient, but spin.
- Added better mouse control to rubik, cube21, crackberg, and julia.
- Cosmetic improvements to queens and endgame.
- sonar can now ping local subnet on DHCP.
- Most savers now resize/rotate properly.
- Various fixes.
New in XScreenSaver 5.17 (Jun 23, 2012)
- More iOS tweaks.
- Fixed some compilation problems.
- Enlarged the texture image for lament.
New in XScreenSaver 5.16 (Jun 21, 2012)
- Ported to iPhone and iPad.
- XInput devices now also ignore small mouse motions.
- Loading images via RSS feeds is much improved.
- Various minor fixes.
New in XScreenSaver 5.15 (Apr 18, 2012)
- New hacks, hilbert, companioncube and tronbit.
- Image-manipulating hacks can now load from RSS or Atom feeds: imageDirectory may contain a URL.
- Updated webcollage for recent search engine changes.
- phosphor and apple2 can now be run as standalone terminal emulator applications on MacOS.
- photopile sped up.
- New molecule in molecule.
- ``Upgraded'' to XCode 4.0, which means that MacOS 10.4 PPC builds are impossible, and Intel is now required.
- Turned on LC_CTYPE on Linux; maybe Japanese password entry works now?
New in XScreenSaver 5.14 (May 21, 2011)
- Fixed crash in Blank Only Mode when DPMS disabled.
- Added ``Quick Power-off in Blank Only Mode'' option.
- BSOD GLaDOS.
New in XScreenSaver 5.13 (Apr 19, 2011)
- Optionally enabled full-scene OpenGL antialiasing. Set the resource *multiSample to true if doing so doesn't kill performance with your video hardware.
- New version of glhanoi.
- Image-loading hacks that display the file name now also display the sub-directory (xscreensaver-getimage now returns relative paths under imageDirectory).
- Passwords that contain UTF-8 non-Latin1 chars are now typeable.
- Numerous minor stability fixes.
New in XScreenSaver 5.12 (Dec 5, 2010)
- Big speed improvement on OSX for heavy XCopyArea users (xmatrix, moire2, phosphor, etc.)
- Plugged a bad OSX-only Pixmap leak.
- Kludged around the OSX pty bug that caused text to be truncated in phosphor, starwars, apple2, etc.
- New molecule in molecule.
- glhanoi now supports an arbitrary number of poles.
- Turned on ``New Login'' button by default.
- Added support for XInput-style alternate input devices.
New in XScreenSaver 5.11 (Aug 2, 2010)
- New versions of photopile, strange.
- Worked around MacOS 10.6 garbage collector bug that caused the screen saver process to become enormous.
- Fixed flicker in pipes, cubestorm, and noof.
- Fixed EXIF rotation on MacOS 10.6.
- Fixed desktop-grabbing when screen locked on MacOS.
- Minor fixes to circuit, polyhedra, tangram, gears, pinion, substrate, xanalogtv.
- Fixed some leaks in xanalogtv and apple2.
- Better seeding of the RNG.
New in XScreenSaver 5.10 (Sep 8, 2009)
- Fixed some crashes and color problems on MacOS 10.6.
- Retired hypercube and hyperball, which are redundant with polytopes.
New in XScreenSaver 5.09 (Sep 3, 2009)
- Ported to MacOS 10.6, including various 64-bit fixes.
- New hack, rubikblocks.
- Fixed another potential RANDR crash.
- Use correct proxy server on MacOS.
- Molecule now correctly displays PDB 3.2 files.
- Updates to mirrorblob, glhanoi, and sonar.
- Rewritten version of klein hack.
- New hack, surfaces, incorporating objects from old klein hack, plus new ones.
- Merged juggle and juggler3d hacks.
- Fixed compilation under gcc 4.4.0 (strict aliasing).
- Fixed intermittent failure in xscreensaver-command.
New in XScreenSaver 5.08 (Dec 29, 2008)
- New hack, photopile.
- Rewrote sonar and jigsaw as OpenGL programs.
- Minor tweaks to maze, m6502, hypnowheel, and timetunnel.
- Savers that load images now obey EXIF rotation tags.
- Arrgh, more RANDR noise! Fixes this time for rotated screens, and for systems where RANDR lies and says the screen size is 0x0.
- When the password dialog has timed out or been cancelled, don't pop it right back up a second time.
- Password timeouts/cancels don't count as ``failed logins''.
- Retired some of the older, less interesting savers: say goodbye to bubbles, critical, flag, forest, glforestfire, lmorph, laser, lightning, lisa, lissie, rotor, sphere, spiral, t3d, vines, whirlygig, and worm.
- Merged munch and mismunch.
- Updated webcollage to use twitpic.com as well.
New in XScreenSaver 5.07 (Aug 11, 2008)
- Xinerama/RANDR tweaks for old-style multi-screen.
- Added bumpy skin and cel shading to skytentacles.
- flipflop can load images onto the tiles.
- Fixed the bouncing ball in stairs.
- Added the missing Utah Teapotahedron to polyhedra.
- blitspin works with color images on OSX now.
- Added transparency to stonerview.
- Improved layout of the preferences dialogs: they should all now be usable even on ridiculously tiny laptop screens.
- MacOS preferences text fields now prevent you from entering numbers that are out of range.
- Added ``Reset to Defaults'' button on X11.
- Added relevant Wikipedia links to many of the screen saver descriptions.
- All hacks support the -fps option, not just GL ones.
- The -fps option now shows CPU load.
New in XScreenSaver 5.06 (Jul 17, 2008)
- Xinerama/RANDR fixes: this time for sure. It should now work to add/remove monitors or resize screens at any time.
- New hack, skytentacles.
- New version of gleidescope.
- Added the -log option to the xscreensaver daemon, since a truly shocking number of Linux users seem to have no idea how to redirect output to a file.
- Added -duration arg to most image-loading hacks, so that they pick a new image every few minutes.
- Added an ATM crash to BSOD.
New in XScreenSaver 5.05 (Mar 3, 2008)
- New hacks, cubicgrid, hypnowheel, and lcdscrub (which isn't really a screen saver).
- Updates to m6502 and gears.
- Fixed double-buffering problems in cubestorm and noof.
- Better handling of horizontal scroll wheels.
- Attempt to work around latest Xinerama braindamage: if the server reports overlapping screens, use the largest non-overlapping rectangles available.
- Don't warning about receipt of bogus ClientMessages, since Gnome's just never going to stop sending those.
- Worked around MacOS 10.5 perl bug that caused the text-displaying hacks to fail on some systems.
- Hopefully fixed font-related System Preferences crashes in MacOS savers.
- The recent PAM changes broke the ``Caps Lock'' warning in the password dialog, the failed login warnings, and syslogging. Fixed all that.