Starfield Screensaver_
What is the starfield screensaver?
Modes
How to use as a screensaver
Keyboard shortcuts
Also try: 3D Pipes
Guide — warp speed in five steps
Tune the stars, then let it run full screen.
Classic, Hyperspace, Nebula or Zen — or press 1 to 4.
Drag Speed, or use the ↑ and ↓ keys while it runs.
Raise Warp for long streaks, and tune star count (100–1,200), size and glow.
White, eight tints, rainbow, or any custom colour.
Click the animation or press F. Space pauses, Esc exits.
Presets at a glance
- 1 Classic
- Steady white drift, the original look
- 2 Hyperspace
- Maximum speed and streaks
- 3 Nebula
- Rainbow stars
- 4 Zen
- Slow and sparse
- F
- Full screen on/off
- Space
- Pause / resume
- ↑ ↓
- Faster / slower
- R
- Reset to defaults
- Esc
- Leave full screen
- TV / monitor
- Open the page, press F, leave it running
- laptop
- Plug in power — browsers may throttle animation on battery
- OS screensaver
- A web page can’t register as one; use full screen instead
The starfield screensaver, explained
The starfield screensaver simulates flying through space: points of light stream outward from the centre of the screen, growing and stretching into streaks as you seem to accelerate. As Starfield Simulation it shipped with Windows 3.1 and stayed in the screensaver list through Windows 95, 98, Me and 2000, until Windows XP dropped it. This version recreates the effect in your browser on an HTML5 canvas, with nothing to download or install.
How the effect works
Every star has a position in 3D space. Each frame the stars move towards you, and their screen position is their x and y divided by their distance. As a star gets closer, that division pushes it outward faster and it is drawn larger, so the field seems to rush past from a vanishing point in the centre. The warp streak is a line from the star’s previous screen position to its current one: the faster you go, the longer the line. Stars that pass the viewer are recycled far away, so the field never runs out.
Getting the warp-speed look
Raise Warp to stretch each star into a streak and Speed to accelerate; the Hyperspace preset maxes both. For a calmer screen, lower Warp to get separate points of light and use the Zen preset.
Running it on a TV or second monitor
Open the page on the screen you want, click the animation or press F, and move the mouse away. On phones and tablets, full screen works where the browser allows it; on iPhone the page fills the browser window instead. It runs on Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android in any current browser.
Free, private, no install
The screensaver is free, with no account, no ads and no watermark, and it runs entirely in your browser.