Windows XP Bliss Screensaver — the green hill, alive_
Preset modes
Just like an XP screensaver
Keyboard
Guide — the XP hill on your screen in 30 seconds
Living hill for the classic midday look, a Still wallpaper, Golden hour, a full Day & night cycle, Real time, a Rainy day or Winter.
Drag the hour slider from dawn to a starry night, let it run through the day, or let it follow your own clock.
Spring flowers, summer green, autumn gold or a snowy hill; clear, cloudy, rain, snow or morning mist.
Choose Start after 30 seconds to 5 minutes. When you leave the page alone, the hill fills the window, just like an XP screensaver.
Save as wallpaper renders the current view at your screen's full resolution as a PNG for your desktop.
What makes it look real
The grass is built from layers of noise: broad patches, fine grain and a lit crest, with a second hill and a hazy ridge behind it. Wind runs across it as moving bands of light.
Every cloud is generated with soft edges, bright tops and grey undersides, and drifts at its own speed. The sky shifts from deep blue at the top to a pale horizon.
- Dawn
- pink horizon, cool land
- Midday
- saturated blue and green
- Evening
- golden light, then orange and violet
- Night
- stars and a crescent moon
- Birds
- small flocks cross the sky now and then
- Butterflies
- tap the grass and they fly up
- Weather
- rain streaks, snowflakes, morning mist
The Windows XP Bliss screensaver, alive in your browser
Bliss is the default desktop wallpaper of Windows XP: a bright green hill under a deep blue sky with a few white clouds. For millions of people it was the first thing they saw every time they turned on a computer in the 2000s. This page turns that image into a moving Bliss screensaver: an original, live-painted green hill in the same saturated colours, where clouds drift, the grass moves in the wind and the light follows the time of day. It runs in any browser, fullscreen, with nothing to download.
The story behind the Bliss wallpaper
The original Bliss is a photograph taken by Charles O'Rear in January 1996, in the hills of Sonoma County, California, between the towns of Napa and Sonoma. He took it on medium-format film, on a day when winter rain had turned the grass bright green and a clear sky was coming in behind a storm. Microsoft bought the rights to the photo in 2000 and made it the default wallpaper of Windows XP, released in October 2001. Because Windows XP ran on hundreds of millions of PCs, Microsoft has described Bliss as possibly the most viewed photograph in the world. The hill itself did not stay that way: it was later planted with vineyards.
This screensaver does not use the photograph. The hill, sky and clouds are drawn from scratch by the browser with mathematical noise, so every cloud is different and the scene can change with the hour, the season and the weather.
How screensavers worked in Windows XP
In Windows XP you chose a screensaver under Display Properties → Screen Saver, set how many idle minutes to wait, and could preview it. The screensaver started on its own when you stopped using the computer and disappeared as soon as you moved the mouse or pressed a key. XP shipped with screensavers such as the floating Windows XP logo, a slideshow of your pictures, Marquee and the 3D classics. This page copies that behaviour: set Start after, leave the page alone, and the hill takes over the window; move the mouse to come back.
Use it as a screensaver or wallpaper on Windows 11, Windows 10 or a Mac
Open the page on the screen you want, choose a preset and press F for fullscreen. The page asks the browser to keep the display awake, so it keeps running like a screensaver; press Esc to leave. To start it automatically when your computer is idle, use a free "web page screensaver" app and give it the address of this page. For your desktop background, press Save as wallpaper: you get a PNG in your screen's exact resolution, at any time of day or season you like, which you can set as wallpaper in Windows Settings → Personalisation → Background or in macOS System Settings → Wallpaper.
Times of day, seasons and weather
- Dawn and morning: a pink and orange horizon, cool light on the grass.
- Midday: the deep blue sky and vivid green of the classic wallpaper.
- Golden hour: low, warm sunlight and long golden tones on the hill.
- Dusk and night: orange and violet, then dark blue with stars and a crescent moon.
- Seasons: yellow flowers in spring, green in summer, golden grass in autumn and a snow-covered hill in winter.
- Weather: drifting cumulus on a clear day, a heavy grey sky with rain, falling snow, or a morning mist in the valley.
Free, private, nothing to install
Everything is drawn on your own device in the browser. Nothing is uploaded, there is no account, no ads and no watermark. Your settings are remembered in your browser, and Copy link shares your exact hour, season and weather.
More classic screensavers
Relive more of that era with the Windows 95 screensavers, the Windows 98 screensavers, the 3D Pipes screensaver and the aquarium, or see all screensavers.