# Bash Screensavers turns a shell into a twelve-effect arcade > Bash Screensavers is an MIT licensed collection of animated ASCII screensavers written entirely in Bash, driven by a single menu script or run one effect at a time from the gallery directory. It is a terminal toy rather than a display power management tool, and the documentation shows a project still working out how it versions and describes itself. **attogram/bash-screensavers** — Turn your idle shell into a visual playground with this collection of Bash screensav­ers - Repository: https://github.com/attogram/bash-screensavers - Stars: 959 · Forks: 21 - Language: Shell - License: MIT - Published: 2026-10-20 · Updated: 2026-10-20 · Language: en - Canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/attogram-bash-screensavers ## A single menu script stands in for a screensaver daemon Screensaver software usually arrives as a daemon plus a desktop integration layer plus a config file that records how long the monitor has been idle. Bash Screensavers skips all of that. After a clone, the working directory contains a script named screensaver.sh, and running it prints a numbered catalogue and waits for a choice. That menu is the entire product surface. The project states its premise plainly: a collection of screensavers written entirely in bash, built because of the joke that a graphics card and a rendering engine are unnecessary when echo, sleep, and a little bit of tput magic are available. The practical consequence is that the audience is narrower than the word screensaver suggests. Nothing here detects idleness, blanks a monitor, or locks a session. It is a terminal toy that takes over a shell window with animation. If your goal is protecting a display from burn-in, this sits in the wrong category. If your goal is a scriptable animation loop you can start over SSH on a headless machine, the design matches the job well. ## The menu output doubles as the project catalogue Running the script with no arguments prints the list of available effects and a prompt. The twelve entries documented for the collection are alpha (random colorful pixels), bouncing, cutesaver, fireworks, life, matrix, pipes, rain, speaky, stars, tunnel, and vibe, each with a one line description in the listing. ```bash Bash Screensavers v0.0.27 (Mystic Shine) 1 . alpha - random colorful pixels 2 . bouncing - bouncing 'O' madness 3 . cutesaver - infinite loop of cuteness 4 . fireworks - Ooh! Aah! Pretty lights! 5 . life - cellular automata 6 . matrix - the matrix has you 7 . pipes - an endless pipe maze 8 . rain - soothing, gentle rain 9 . speaky - dramatic talking screensaver 10. stars - twinkling starfield 11. tunnel - fly into the digital tunnel 12. vibe - vibe coding (Press ^C to exit) ``` The version line in that sample output is worth pausing on. It reads v0.0.27 (Mystic Shine), while the release history reaches v0.0.28 with the same Mystic Shine label, published on 2025-08-29, followed by tags named 1 on 2026-07-06 and 0002 on 2026-07-23. Two separate version schemes are visible at once, a dotted semantic style and a numeric style, and the example in the quickstart lags behind the highest dotted release. For a user this only matters cosmetically, but for anyone automating a check against the running version it matters that the banner string and the tag names do not share a format. ## Three ways to pick an effect, one way to bypass the menu Once the repository is on disk, an effect can be launched in several ways. The menu accepts a name or a number, a random mode picks one for you, and two flags report help or version without drawing anything. ```bash ./screensaver.sh name ./screensaver.sh number ./screensaver.sh -r ./screensaver.sh -h ./screensaver.sh -v ./gallery/name/name.sh ``` The last line is the most useful for scripting, because each effect lives in its own directory under gallery/ and runs as a standalone script. That layout means an effect can be launched from another script, piped, or backgrounded without going through the interactive menu at all. The interactive prompt is a convenience layer, not a dependency of the effects themselves. Exiting is documented in the menu itself with a note to press ^C, and that is the only exit path described. There is no key binding for pause, no time limit, and no documented way to change how long an effect runs before it stops on its own. An effect therefore runs until interrupted, which suits a deliberate session of watching animation and does not suit a background job that is expected to end. ## A gallery directory, a jury directory, and a shelf for unfinished work The repository is organized like a small community project rather than a flat script dump. The top level holds gallery/, jury/, library/, spotlight/, not-ready-for-primetime/, plus screensaver.sh, AGENTS.md, CONTRIBUTING.md, and LICENSE. The gallery is the main body of work, with a README of its own at gallery/README.md carrying information on all the screensavers, and a preview image for the matrix effect at gallery/matrix/matrix.gif. The jury directory holds a criteria document at jury/README.md describing the rules the maintainers apply, and the project describes the jury as testing everything and being a bit batsy about it. Read as a workflow, that means each effect is expected to pass a review checklist before it counts as part of the gallery. The not-ready-for-primetime/ directory holds effects that may be broken, incomplete, or below the quality standards of the main gallery, with the explicit warning to experiment at your own risk. That separation is a sensible way to keep a playful collection from shipping broken scripts, and it also means the number of visible effects and the number of available effects are not the same thing. Two supporting areas complete the layout. Spotlight/ holds curator tools for marketing and publicity work such as producing pretty previews of the screensavers, with its own manual. Library/ is described as filled with items about visualizations and voices, indexed at library/README.md. ## Terminal rendering is the hard ceiling, not the script logic Every effect is constrained by what a terminal can draw and how fast a shell loop can redraw. The version badge states Bash 3.2 or newer, and there is no mention of any compiled dependency, package manager step, or installation script. That means the ceiling is the terminal emulator and the shell, not the project. Two practical limits follow. First, output is text. The listed effects are built from characters, and the descriptions lean on that: matrix is a character rain, pipes is a maze of pipe glyphs, stars is a twinkling starfield. Anything expecting smooth gradients, motion at video frame rates, or color beyond what tput exposes is asking for more than the medium gives. Second, the redraw loop is a shell loop. sleep and echo repeated at speed will keep a CPU busy for as long as the effect runs, and the project offers no idle trigger, no frame rate control, and no documented maximum duration. That is an acceptable cost for a screen you are deliberately watching and an annoying one for a shared server where nobody asked for the animation. The documentation does not say anything about resource limits, so this remains an inference from how the scripts are described rather than a stated policy. ## What the project gives up compared with a desktop screensaver The closest real alternative to this project is not another collection of ASCII animations, it is the ordinary desktop screensaver that the window manager starts on its own after a period of inactivity and that takes over the screen on wake. The difference in approach is the whole point. A desktop screensaver is a background service. It has a state machine for idle detection, it hooks into session events, it draws with a graphics stack, and it disappears when the user returns. Bash Screensavers inverts every one of those properties. It is a foreground program, it starts only because a person typed a command, it draws with character output, and it stops only when that person interrupts it. That inversion produces real advantages. The animation is reproducible from a shell history line, runs over SSH where no graphics stack exists, needs no installation step beyond a clone, and can be scripted alongside other shell work. The matching disadvantages are equally concrete. There is nothing to blank a display, no password gate, no multi monitor handling, and no way to have the effect appear while you are away from the keyboard. Anyone choosing between the two is choosing between a toy you start and a service that starts itself. ## Versioning, citing, and the cost of staying current The project offers a DOI for citing all versions, 10.5281/zenodo.2122622, with a Zenodo record at zenodo.org/records/21226222, which gives releases a persistent identity that a bare tag does not. The licence is MIT, which is permissive enough for commercial reuse and modification without imposing copyleft obligations on anything that links to it, though interpreting the terms for a particular distribution remains a question for your own legal review. Upgrading looks different for a project with no package manager. There is no version pin in your shell profile and nothing to reinstall, because you never installed anything. The practical upgrade is a git pull inside the clone, which means the working tree needs no local edits, and the whole delivery mechanism is the same as the quickstart. There is no documented migration step between versions because there is no persistent configuration to migrate, and there is no changelog file in the top level listing. The last push was on 2026-07-23, which matches the newest tag, 0002, dated the same day. Before that came tag 1 on 2026-07-06 and the dotted release v0.0.28 on 2025-08-29. The repository is not archived and the activity is recent, but the project does not publish a stated release cadence, so nothing here supports a claim about how often versions will arrive. The documentation also does not describe a rollback procedure, a supported terminal list, or a policy for the effects sitting in not-ready-for-primetime/. ## Conclusion Bash Screensavers suits anyone who wants a scriptable animation loop in a plain terminal, including over SSH on a machine with no graphics stack, and it suits contributors who want a small Bash project with a clear gallery and jury workflow. It is the wrong choice for anyone expecting an idle-activated daemon that blanks a display or locks a session, since nothing in the project hooks into a window manager or detects idleness. Before adopting it, check that Bash 3.2 or newer is on the machine, read the gallery index to confirm an effect matches what you want, and decide whether a project whose own example output still names version v0.0.27 while its release list reaches v0.0.28 fits your expectations for upkeep. ## FAQ ### How do I install and start Bash Screensavers? Clone the repository, enter the directory, and run ./screensaver.sh, which prints the menu of effects and asks you to choose. The project's version badge states Bash 3.2 or newer is required, and there is no package manager step or dependency installation. ### How do I run one specific screensaver from Bash Screensavers? Pass the effect name or its menu number to ./screensaver.sh, for example ./screensaver.sh matrix, or run the effect script directly as ./gallery/name/name.sh. Random selection is available through ./screensaver.sh -r. ### How do I exit a Bash Screensavers effect? Press ^C to interrupt the running effect, which is the exit path shown in the menu output. The project documents no key binding for pause and no automatic time limit for an effect. ### What license does Bash Screensavers use and how can I cite it? The repository is licensed under MIT, and the project gives a DOI of 10.5281/zenodo.2122622 for citing all versions, with the Zenodo record at zenodo.org/records/21226222. ### Are all Bash Screensavers effects finished? No. The not-ready-for-primetime/ directory holds effects that may be broken, incomplete, or below the standard of the main gallery, and the documentation tells you to experiment there at your own risk. ## Sources - [attogram/bash-screensavers on GitHub](https://github.com/attogram/bash-screensavers) - [Issues](https://github.com/attogram/bash-screensavers/issues) - [License: MIT](https://github.com/attogram/bash-screensavers/blob/main/LICENSE) - [README](https://github.com/attogram/bash-screensavers/blob/main/README.md) - [Releases](https://github.com/attogram/bash-screensavers/releases) --- Hysen Labs editorial analysis, written from the project's own repository and release notes. Cite the canonical page: https://hysenlabs.com/projects/attogram-bash-screensavers