Windows 98 Screensaver Emulator

Windows 98 (June 1998) kept the Windows 95 set — Blank Screen, Curves and Colors, Flying Through Space, Flying Windows, Mystify Your Mind, Scrolling Marquee — and added the OpenGL savers 3D FlowerBox, 3D Flying Objects, 3D Maze, 3D Pipes and 3D Text, plus the Active Desktop's Channel Screen Saver. Windows XP later dropped 3D Maze, Flying Windows and the Channel Screen Saver. Every one of them is here, rendered the way a 1998 PC drew them.

A cube (or tetrahedron, or double pyramid) whose checkerboard faces bloom outward into petals and fold back in while it tumbles and cycles colours. Shape, size, spin, resolution, checkerboard, colour cycling and two-sided lighting are all in its setup dialog.

The styles that made it famous — Ribbon, 2 Ribbons, Twist, Explode and a waving Textured flag. The real default style waved the Windows logo; here the flag uses a clouds, checkerboard or rainbow image instead.

Windows 98's Active Desktop could show your subscribed web "channels" full-screen as a screen saver. This recreation cycles through channel pages with a scrolling ticker and a close box, and has the original option to close it only with the Close button instead of the mouse.

3D Pipes very occasionally draws a teapot instead of a ball joint, and typing volcano into 3D Text cycles through volcano names — both are Windows 98-era easter eggs that were removed in Windows XP. 3D Text can also show the time instead of text, as the Windows 98 version could.

On purpose. Everything renders at 640×480 by default and is scaled up with hard pixel edges. In Display Properties → Settings choose 256 Colors or 16 Colors for period ordered dithering, or change the screen area to 800×600 or 1024×768.

· Click a channel on the Channel Bar — or use the Quick Launch button next to Start.
· Display Properties → Effects: large icons, animated menus, and outline dragging when "Show window contents while dragging" is off.
· Web tab: turn the Active Desktop and its Channel Bar on or off.
· Settings tab: change the screen area and you get 15 seconds to keep it.
· Leave the page alone for the Wait time and the screen saver starts on its own.
· MS-DOS Prompt: ver, dir, or the name of a screen saver.
· Start → Shut Down... → Stand by, Shut down or Restart.

June 25, 1998. Windows 98 Second Edition followed in 1999, and Windows Me in 2000 was the last of the Windows 9x line before Windows XP moved everyone to the NT kernel.

Internet Explorer built into the shell, the Active Desktop and Channel Bar, the Quick Launch toolbar, gradient title bars, FAT32 support, much better USB support, and a much bigger set of OpenGL screen savers.

Yes — the Screen Saver tab had a genuine "Password protected" checkbox, turning these animations into an early, low-tech screen lock long before Windows had a dedicated lock screen.

CRT monitors could suffer phosphor burn-in: a static image left on screen for hours would leave a permanent ghost. Keeping the picture moving (or black) prevented it. Modern LCD and OLED panels barely have that problem, so today screensavers survive as nostalgia and ambience.

Use the Fullscreen button: it stays running until you press Escape or click. Preview behaves like 1998 and stops as soon as the mouse moves. Choose 4:3 (authentic) or Fill wide screen.

The desktop scales to fit, tapping an icon opens it, and fullscreen works on mobile browsers that support it.

Leave the page alone for the Wait time and the screen saver starts on its own. With Password protected ticked it asks for the password you set with Change... The password is only kept in memory until you reload the page.

This is an independent fan recreation and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or associated with Microsoft Corporation or any of its affiliates. No original Microsoft code, images or logos are used — everything is redrawn from scratch in the browser, and the channel pages are made-up examples. Product names are used for identification only.