TV Static Screensaver_
What is the TV static screensaver?
Modes
How to use as a screensaver
Keyboard shortcuts
Related searches
Guide — analogue TV snow on any screen, fullscreen
Nine modes from black-and-white snow to colour bars, a No Signal screen, VHS tracking and a test card, with intensity, grain, scanlines, rolling bar and flicker. Drawn on an HTML5 canvas, nothing to install.Choose one of nine modes, from TV Snow and Colour Snow to No Signal, Colour Bars, VHS Tracking, Weak Signal, Green Phosphor, Amber Terminal and Test Card, or press 1 to 9.
Intensity (1 to 10, 8 by default) sets how strongly the noise shows. In the snow and VHS modes it fills the screen; over the bars, No Signal, test card and weak-signal screens it stays a light layer of static.
Grain (1 to 8, 3 by default) sets the size of each noise speck, from fine to chunky. Colour noise switches between black-and-white and random RGB specks.
Toggle Scanlines, the slow Rolling bar that drifts down the screen, and a subtle brightness Flicker. Reset Defaults or R goes back to TV Snow.
Press Enter Fullscreen, click the screen or press F. Move the mouse for the Exit Fullscreen and Pause buttons; Space pauses, Esc leaves.
Modes and shortcuts
- 1 TV Snow
- Black-and-white static with rolling bar
- 2 Colour Snow
- Random RGB specks
- 5 VHS Tracking
- Tearing bands, red/cyan fringing, blinking “TRACKING”
- 6 Weak Signal
- A faint, pulsing ghost image and “searching for signal”
- 7 / 8 Green / Amber
- Static tinted like a mono CRT
- 3 No Signal
- Blue screen with a NO SIGNAL box
- 4 Colour Bars
- Simplified SMPTE-style bars
- 9 Test Card
- Grid, circle, crosshair and a 10-step grey wedge
- F
- Fullscreen on/off
- Space
- Pause / resume
- 1–9
- Switch mode
- R
- Reset to TV Snow
- 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
- sound
- None: the page is silent
TV static, explained
What is the TV static screensaver?
It recreates the flickering snow you used to see on an analogue television tuned to a dead channel: random black-and-white (or colour) specks, faint scanlines and a slow rolling bar. Every frame of noise is generated fresh in your browser on an HTML5 canvas, so the static never repeats. Besides the snow it has eight other modes, including SMPTE-style colour bars, a blue No Signal screen, a VHS tracking glitch and a test card.
Can I use it for white noise or as a backdrop?
As a visual backdrop, yes: moving static works as an ambient or eerie background for videos, streams, Halloween displays and photo shoots. It is not an audio white-noise generator, though. The page is silent, so pair it with your own white-noise track if you want the hiss as well.
How do I run this fullscreen as a screensaver?
Click the screen, press Enter Fullscreen in the sidebar or press F. The static fills your entire display. Move the mouse to reveal the Exit Fullscreen and Pause buttons, which hide again 2.5 seconds after the mouse stops, or press Escape to return to normal view. Where a browser blocks the fullscreen API, the static fills the browser window instead. The page does not keep the display awake, so set your sleep timer to Never if it should keep running.
Do I need to download or install anything?
No. This TV static screensaver runs entirely in your browser using HTML5 Canvas. There is nothing to download or install. It works on any modern browser on Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android.
What modes are included?
Nine modes: TV Snow (classic black-and-white static), Colour Snow (random RGB noise), No Signal (a blue screen with a NO SIGNAL box under light static), Colour Bars (a simplified SMPTE-style test pattern), VHS Tracking (tearing bands, red and cyan fringing and a blinking TRACKING label), Weak Signal (a faint pulsing ghost image with a searching-for-signal caption), Green Phosphor and Amber Terminal (static tinted like old monochrome CRTs) and a Test Card (grid, circle, crosshair and a greyscale wedge). Press 1 to 9 to switch.
Where did TV static come from?
An analogue TV with no station to lock on to still amplifies whatever reaches its tuner, and turns the gain up as far as it goes while it looks for a signal. What it shows is random electrical noise: mostly thermal noise from the antenna and the set’s own electronics, plus interference from nearby equipment and the atmosphere. A small fraction of it is the cosmic microwave background, the leftover radiation of the Big Bang. Because that noise is random, the picture becomes a field of black-and-white dots known as snow.
Digital television works differently. A digital receiver either decodes a clean picture or nothing at all, so modern TVs show a black or blue screen with a No Signal message instead of snow. Since the analogue switch-off in most countries, real TV static has become a piece of nostalgia, which is exactly what this page recreates.
What are SMPTE colour bars?
Colour bars are a test pattern broadcasters used to line up and calibrate video equipment. The best-known version, standardised by the SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers), shows seven vertical bars in grey, yellow, cyan, green, magenta, red and blue, with extra strips below for checking colour and black level. The Colour Bars mode here draws a simplified version of that layout; it is for the look, not for calibrating a real screen.