34 Stunning & Free Mac Screensavers for OS X

Everyone loves a good screensaver – they can relax, mesmerize, entertain, and (supposedly) prevent damage to your monitor. The default collection which ship with Leopard are excellent, but you needn’t limit yourself to looking at those wonderful beach photos every day.

We’ve scoured the internet to find 34 stunning screensavers for OS X, each with something unique to offer. There’s something for everyone – from calm and serene, to abstract and wacky. Dive in and have fun picking out a new screensaver!

Free OS X Screensavers

MovingPhotos 3D

This saver arranges your photos to form 3D constructions, such as a city block with buildings.

Analogy

Analogy Screensaver

Analogy is a typographic clock which fuses the immediacy of digital with the visual-spatial quality of analogue into a hybrid format.

Time Machine Screensaver

Time Machine

A time machine-like animation that loads as a screensaver. Choose between normal or RSS version.

HAL 9000

HAL Screensaver

John Gruber: Gorgeous homage to HAL by Joe Mackenzie. I haven’t used a screensaver on my computer in at least 10 years, but I’m running one now.

Euphoria

Euphoria Screensaver

A port of the Windows OpenGL ScreenSaver made by Terence M. Welsh, full of abstract colors and shapes.

Econ

Econ Screensaver

The screensaver that uses your icons, flying through them in high quality icon bliss. It automatically gathers them from your /Applications folder.

Fenêtres Volantes

Fenêtres Volantes Screensaver

Taking your open applications and catapulting them around the screen in a really great effect.

Plasma Tunnel

Plasma Tunnel Screensaver

A swirling vortex of screensaver delight.

Red Baron

Red Baron Screensaver

Fly behind a classic bi-plane as it soars across idyllic scenery.

Hyperspace

HyperSpace Screensaver

Hyperspace is a screen saver that sends its users on a virtual trip through a wormhole, just like the ones in some sci-fi TV shows and movies.

Digg Stack

Digg Stack shows diggs occurring in real time on up to 100 stories at once. Diggers fall from above and stack up on popular stories. Brightly colored stories have more Diggs.

Shuffle Saver

ShuffleSaver

Loads your favorite photos from flickr.com or iPhoto and shuffles them. You get new photos everytime the screensaver starts.

Alien Sun Clock

Alien Sun Clock Screensaver

Alien Sun Clock Screensaver lets you look at the usual things in a surprisingly new way with a warm, radiant clock.

Solar Winds

This is a very mesmerizing particle effects saver. Tweak the settings a little and you’ll find that you can achieve an amazing number of different patterns.

Lotsa Water

LotsaWater Screensaver

This screensaver renders a fairly realistic water effect over your desktop, showing it distorted through the wavy surface of the water as raindrops fall on the surface.

Digg Arc

Digg Arc Screensaver

Digg Arc displays stories, topics, and containers wrapped around a sphere. Arcs trail people as they Digg stories across topics. Stories with more Diggs make thicker arcs.

AlphaBaby

AlphaBaby Screensaver

A great screensaver for kids, displaying letters, numbers, shapes and sounds as you interact with the mouse and keyboard.

National Geographic

National Geographic Screensaver

National Geographic, the standard bearer for quality images delivers with this screensaver. A spectacular slideshow of pictures from around the world.

Artecnica Clock

A funky timepiece with a variety of different number styles and graphics.

Dashsaver

When the computer is inactive after the specified time as set in the Screen Saver preference pane, the dashboard is displayed and the users’ desktop is hidden

Flux

Flux Screensaver

Dancing, pulsing, colorful and beautiful.

Holding Pattern Coach Class

Free version with 15 aerial views – a great way to try out screen saver cinema.

SoundStream

SoundStream Screensaver

Soundstream is a Mac OS X screensaver that responds to sound input. Colorful Flurry-like streams pulse to the beat of music or bloom with ambient noise.

ScriptSaver

ScriptSaver is a Mac OS X screensaver which runs AppleScripts when it activates and deactivates. Great for performing maintenance, or updating iChat status when the computer is idle.

Save Hollywood

This screensaver allows you to display QuickTime Movies as a screensaver. Useful for taking a little time out.

Fireflies

Fireflies Screensaver

Possible a little more dramatic than a real-life firefly, but still cool.

Matrix Reloaded

Matrix Reloaded Screensaver

No one can claim that they don’t feel a little bit cool with a Matrix screensaver. Go on – try it out…

Skyrocket

SkyRocket Screensaver

A gorgeous firework screensaver, rending in 3D with realistic graphics and sound.

Under The Sea 3D

Imax Under The Sea

A delightful, high quality, look at life under the sea. Typical IMAX delight!

LotsaEscher

Lotsa Escher Screesaver

This is a screensaver which displays an animated version of M.C. Escher’s Print Gallery drawing. Great for art fans!

Snowfall

Snowfall Screensaver

We’re still a long way off Christmas, but it’s worth downloading to have handy when December comes around…

Surveillance Saver

SurveillanceSaver is a simple screen saver that displays more than 1000 surveillance cameras worldwide.

Helios

Helios Screensaver

Helios is a particle attraction/repulsion screen saver where “blobs” emit and receive multi-colored particles. It’s difficult to describe, but as some have said about the screen saver, it’s pretty insane.

Presstube

Presstube Screensaver

Fast paced and unusual, with a random array of sketches and drawings being quickly drafted on your screen.

Please Share!

If you’re the proud owner of a great screensaver not featured here, don’t keep it to yourself! Please let us know in the comments – I’m always on the look out for new ways to keep my monitor happy…

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Aaron
April 27th
Reply
It might not be “stunning” but I think PongSaver (http://www.rogueamoeba.com/freebies/) is simply genius.
- Aaron
  April 27th
  Reply
  (for those too lazy to copy and paste, I’ll try the link again http://www.rogueamoeba.com/freebies/ )
- Justin
  April 28th
  Reply
  I’ll second that, it’s my current!
Al
April 27th
Reply
http://community.electricsheep.org/node/509
- Bill
  April 27th
  Reply
  I to use Electric Sheep!! It is awesome!
Cuby
April 27th
Reply
Great Set! Thanks… downloading some now to try out.
Cuby
April 27th
Reply
Aww Presstube doesn’t seem to work in Leopard… :( Looked really amazing too.
Ryan
April 27th
Reply
If you mix Save Hollywood with desksaver Plus, you can run any video you want as a screensaver AS YOUR DESKTOP….. I’ve got a wormhole from Stargate running now :P
http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Dashboard-Widgets/Games-Widgets/Desksaver-Plus.shtml
mike
April 27th
Reply
My favorite is http://twistori.com/
Collis Ta'eed
April 27th
Reply
I love the Red Baron!!
vigilare
April 27th
Reply
http://blog.pixelbreaker.com/polarclock/
Prissi
April 27th
Reply
Soundstream is my favorite; I found it a while back when my boyfriend complained about me using the default-everyone-uses-it Flurry. I used it because it’s pretty and it was always the one I loved, back when I was only dreaming about having a Mac… but then I found Soundstream, and maybe I’m a bit of a dork, but watching it make shiny bursts of color makes me so ridiculously HAPPY.
I tried Fireflies and Helios — they both made me kind of dizzy and just don’t compare to the prettiness of Soundstream.
Tom Kenny
April 27th
Reply
I’m a big fan of Lotsa Water but there are some other great screensavers there. Thanks for bringing them to our attention.
Jon
April 27th
Reply
I think fliqlo is great … a flip style clock that looks good across all monitors I have used it on.
http://www.9031.com/downloads/screensavers.html
tom
April 27th
Reply
My favourite grid based clock screensaver.
http://wearebuild.com/projects/grid-based-screensaver.
Gustavs
April 27th
Reply
Nothing beats flurry.
lostsync
April 28th
Reply
i’ve always been partial to Phosphor from the xscreensavers os x port. if you set it to display text from a frequently updated rss feed (like digg or something), it makes a visually appealing and informative screensaver
julian
April 28th
Reply
really really cool man!! lotsaEscher and lotsaWater are really trippy, I saw it for 2 minutes, after that everywhere I look spins around. Thanks for these links.
Toby
April 28th
Reply
I’m partial to Offshoots and Anémona, myself.
Toby
April 28th
Reply
Grrr. That’s Offshoots: http://projects.digitalwaters.net/index.php?q=offshoots
and
Anémona: http://uri.cat/software/Anemona/
(please at least warn us that html isn’t ok)
Zane
April 28th
Reply
I really like Word Clock, makes me laugh looking at it sometimes.
http://www.simonheys.com/wordclock/
Kevin
April 28th
Reply
Google “electric sheep”…in my opinion it is the best
Ryan
April 28th
Reply
A correction of my earlier post, you can run ANY screensaver as your active desktop. Electric Sheep as my desktop? How awesome
Pasi68
April 29th
Reply
Thank you for these great screensavers!
I myself love Zugakousaku’s a bit gothic and weird but always suprising wallpaper Hotel Gadget.
It’s like a screensaver made by David Lynch.
http://www.zugakousaku.com/index.php?ref=works-hotel—en
yosh
April 29th
Reply
http://uri.cat/software/Anemona/
Anemona: By far the best screensaver I’ve ever used.
tkoc
April 29th
Reply
Worth to consider for MacBook/PowerBook users… screensaver made in flash might be processor intensive and therefor not good for your portables fans. Keeps em purring away for hours.
Jeph
April 29th
Reply
de roto baron es “tri-plane”
Andreas
April 30th
Reply
I love Clocksaver. It’s a really nice minimalistic analogue clock:
Andreas
April 30th
Reply
And the link:
http://clocksaver.sourceforge.net/
Ben Randles
April 30th
Reply
Fantastic post Dave. Really like the Escher screensaver. At first I thought it was going to be a simple panorama of some of his work but this is on a whole new level! Some great posts on here. The quality of the articles is impressive and keeps getting better! Keep up the great work :)
Tom
April 30th
Reply
I would say the UNIQLOCK screensaver: http://www.uniqlo.jp/uniqlock/
But sadly it isnt Leopard compatiable … :(
Hakan
May 3rd
Reply
very cool scrsavers. Time machine is my best :)
Shubham
May 4th
Reply
Fliqlo is my favorite
http://www.9031.com/downloads/screensavers.html
Thom Payne
May 8th
Reply
Re: Red Baron. Look again: as Peanuts fans (and WWII aficionados) will know, that’s not a bi-plane. It’s a Fokker TRI-plane. Although it wasn’t the only plane the Red Baron ever flew (and not even the one he put the most hours on) its iconic nature is such that it’s forever linked with him.
Garcya
May 15th
Reply
Love Lotsa Water xxx
MacNetizados.com
June 8th
Reply
Verdaderamente muy buenos los screensaver, Felicidades por la recopilación.-
ROSSY
September 14th
Reply
estan fabulosos felicidades
Richard Holt
September 28th
Reply
Hello
Some of those are great, I wrote a post a while back about creative clock screensavers for the Mac. You can find them here:
http://www.holster.co.uk/blog/nine-nicer-ways-to-tell-the-time
®
diego
October 14th
Reply
Fabulosos
Luke
October 16th
Reply
popurls screensaver – http://popurls.net/
Halvin
November 15th
Reply
None of this work on my mac 10.6.2 any ideas?
snipe
November 20th
Reply
Halvin – many of them have not been upgraded for Snow Leopard, however most will work if you do the following:
In your dock, right click on System Preferences and select OPTIONS > SHOW IN FINDER. Once the Finder window opens, right click on the System Preferences icon and go to Get Info. When the info window pops up, select “Open in 32-bit mode”.
Most of these screensavers will work with this setting.
Smashing Buzz
December 3rd
Reply
creative and some really beautiful screen savers.
Nigel Barber
January 13th
Reply
I’ve created a Concentrichron (a combined clock and calendar) project at: http://www.concentrichron.com.
It is also available as a Windows and MacOSX screensaver under Downloads.
Franssales
January 28th
Reply
I have been looking for a freeware screensaver, with peaceful clock like fiqlo or ismple analoque clock, with date and integration to iCal so it’d show the nearest meetings.
It would be ideal if the screensaver would emphasize the clock, but discreetly (fiqlo is quite big) and leave the rest to less dominant part.
There is one I think, but its payware.
m65
January 30th
Reply
i really like the redbaron