People like screen savers. Computers don't need them nearly as much when the first screen savers were introduced, but people like them anyway. They are like ringtones; they offer an outlet for self expression.

That said, the top 5 list that follows represents the 5 screen savers that satisfy this blogger's need for self expression and may not do the trick for you. Personally, I like a screen saver to foster the kind of curiousity that makes people have to ask "what is that?" They don't have to have complicated visuals but it doesn't hurt.

Here's the list:



  1. Filigree - My current favorite Screen Saver paints beautiful glowing pinstriping across your Mac's screen and gently spins it in three dimensions. From the same guy who brought you Strands this one seems to breathe new life into the tired "random drawing thing" screen saver genre.
  2. Word Clock - This is a screen saver I just found out about today and it's already rocketted to number 2 on my top 5 list. It fills your screen with all the words necessary to tell you any date (except for the year) and time and highlights the appropriate words to do so right down to the second. Program your favorite colors and fonts and make the screen your own. [ Via TUAW ]
  3. Electric Sheep - It's name is a reference to a Philip K. Dick novel that inspired a pretty well-loved movie. The screen saver requires an internet connection to work as it displays "the collective dream of sleeping computers from all over the internet. It's a distributed screen saver that harnesses idle computers into a render farm with the purpose of animating and evolving artificial life-forms." Each "electric sheep" you Mac dreams lasts about 4 seconds and, if you especially like it, you can "vote" for it. Popular sheep live longer and "reproduce." Trippy.
    Other downsides besides the need for an internet connection include the requirement for drive space to download sheep data and the time it takes to buffer enough of that data to display the first "electric sheep.    "
  4. Leopard's Photo Mosiac Screen Saver - This one is built right into the OS. If you have a hefty collection of images on your computer, this one can be breathtaking. Simply put, it take one image from your collection and builds it out of small versions of all your other images.
  5. Tron - This one is simple, but oddly captivating. It spins 3 transparent, nested cubes and cycles their color as it goes. Named for the 1982 Disney flick but, as far as I can tell, it doesn't reference any specific visual from the film.
That's the list. All the screen savers listed are freeware with the possible exception of Leopard's Photo Mosiac Screen Saver which comes free with Mac OS X 10.5.