Nyan Cat Screensaver_
What is the Nyan Cat screensaver?
Modes
How to use as a screensaver
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Guide — flying pixel cats and rainbow trails, fullscreen
An original pixel cat on a waffle-biscuit body, with four presets, three skies, sliders for count, speed and size, and an optional original chiptune. Drawn on an HTML5 canvas, nothing to install.Choose Classic, Party, Calm or Light, or press 1 to 4. A preset sets the count, speed, size and sky in one go and launches fresh cats.
Switch between deep indigo Space, plain black Stars and a pale blue Light sky. Twinkling stars drift past on the two dark skies; Light has none.
Set Count from 1 to 14, Speed from 1 to 10 and Size from 30 to 160. Each cat gets a random size and speed around those values, flies left or right, and re-enters from an edge when it leaves the screen.
Turn on 8-bit music or press M for a looping original chiptune generated in your browser. It is off until you switch it on and goes quiet while paused.
Press Enter Fullscreen, click the sky or press F. Move the mouse for the Exit Fullscreen and Pause buttons; Space pauses, R resets, Esc leaves.
Presets and shortcuts
- 1 Classic
- One big cat in deep space
- 2 Party
- 12 small, fast cats
- 3 Calm
- 2 big cats drifting slowly
- 4 Light
- 3 cats on a bright sky
- F
- Fullscreen on/off
- Space
- Pause / resume
- M
- Music on/off
- 1–4
- Switch preset
- R
- Reset to Classic
- Esc
- Leave fullscreen
- TV / monitor
- Open the page, press F, leave it running
- screen sleep
- The page does not keep the display awake: set your sleep timer to Never while it runs
- OS screensaver
- A web page can’t register as one; use fullscreen instead
The Nyan Cat screensaver, explained
What is the Nyan Cat screensaver?
Nyan Cat is a 2011 internet meme: an animated pixel-art cat with a Pop-Tart body, drawn by artist Chris Torres, flying through space and leaving a rainbow trail. Set to a looping Japanese pop song in a YouTube video that April, it became one of the year’s biggest viral hits. This page is a screensaver tribute to the idea: one or many original pixel cats flying across a starry sky on an HTML5 canvas, with adjustable count, speed and size.
Is this the real Nyan Cat?
No, it is an original tribute. The character here is its own design, a ginger tabby on a golden waffle-biscuit body, and the optional music is an original chiptune, so neither the original artwork nor the song is reproduced. It is an unofficial homage to the flying rainbow cat and is not affiliated with or endorsed by its creator.
Does it play the original song?
No. Turn on 8-bit music (or press M) and an original chiptune loops: a 48-note square-wave melody over a triangle-wave bass line, generated live with the Web Audio API. It is a tune written for this page, not the meme’s song. It is off by default, goes quiet while the animation is paused, and stays as you left it when you reset or switch presets.
How do I run this fullscreen as a screensaver?
Click the animation, press Enter Fullscreen in the sidebar or press F. The sky is redrawn at the full size of your screen with fresh cats. Move the mouse to show the Exit Fullscreen and Pause buttons, which hide again 2.5 seconds after the mouse stops, or press Esc. Where a browser blocks the fullscreen API, the animation fills the browser window instead. The page does not keep the display awake, so set your screen’s sleep timer to Never if it should keep running.
Do I need to download or install anything?
No. The cats are drawn with plain JavaScript on an HTML5 canvas and the music is synthesised in the browser, so there is nothing to download or install. It works in any current browser on Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android.