I finally found a reason again to have a screensaver on my PC

Ever since our monitors support power-safe modes we had little reason to use animated screen-savers anymore. When we don’t use the computer the monitors are turned off and go dark. Safe the planet! And I have to confess that I didn’t install any fancy screensavers for years.

But the other day I came across a screensaver that by itself is reason enough to leave the monitor on a little longer. Apple had created an “Aerial” screensaver for Apple TV that uses gorgeous, slow moving aerial video shots from drones and helicopters as screensaver material. And some guy found out where and how the data is stored… Now there are versions for OSX, Windows and Linux.

I filmed a few samples off my screen with my phone (sorry for the shakeyness) so you can get an idea.

These videos look absolutely stunning on my BenQ BL3201PT 32″ monitors.

In total all the videos together are more than 2 hours long, and somebody has put the complete videos on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YjLf8T0lUs) or you can watch the individual clips.

Here is how to get them on your Mac or PC:

• PC (Windows 10):
  1. Download the Aerial .zip release from Github.
  2. Right-click and select “Extract All…” to unzip the downloaded file. Just accept the default options from the Extraction wizard.
  3. You should be presented with a folder containing AerialScreenSaverV3.scr and AerialScreenSaverV3.exe. Copy the AerialScreenSaverV3.scr file to your Windows installation folder (by default this should be c:\Windows on most PCs).
  4. Type “screen saver” in the task bar search box. Select “Change screen saver” to open Screen open Screen Saver Settings.
  5. Select AerialScreenSaverV3 from the list of screen savers.
  6. see the Github page for more information.
• Mac: How to add the new Apple TV aerial screen savers to your Mac
• Linux:  graysky2/xscreensaver-aerial

Enjoy!