What did burn-in actually do to a CRT monitor?
Screensavers began as damage control, not decoration. A cathode ray tube drew its picture by firing an electron beam at a phosphor coating on the inside of the glass, and phosphor that glowed in the same spot for hours aged faster than the phosphor around it.
The result was a permanent ghost. A menu bar, a login prompt or a spreadsheet grid left on screen overnight could still be read with the monitor switched off. Offices suffered most, because a terminal at a bank counter or an airline desk showed the same layout all day, every day.
The cure was to take the bright pixels away. John Socha, later known for Norton Commander, published a program called SCRNSAVE in the December 1983 issue of Softalk. It blanked an IBM PC display after three minutes of inactivity and did nothing else. Socha is also credited with coining the term screen saver.
That was the entire original brief: stop the picture from sitting still. Everything that came later, the toasters and the pipes and the fish, was decoration bolted onto a maintenance task.
How did a flying toaster become a $30 million business?
Berkeley Systems was founded in Berkeley, California in 1987 by Wes Boyd and Joan Blades, and its first products were access tools for blind Macintosh users. After Dark, the screensaver that made the company famous, was brought to them by two programmers, Jack Eastman and Patrick Beard, and reached the Macintosh in 1989 and Windows in 1991.
The design was modular. Instead of blanking the screen, After Dark ran swappable animated modules and let the owner pick a favorite. Flying Toasters, which arrived with version 2.0 rather than the first release, was the one people bought the box for.
The origin is as small as it sounds. "I drifted into the kitchen, and the toaster caught my eye. My sleep-deprived brain put wings on it," Eastman told Low End Mac in 2007. He drew the frames in the development system's icon editor and gave the toasters what he called "little stubby plucked-chicken wings" and a flapping electrical cord.
By the mid-1990s Berkeley Systems employed about 120 people and was taking in roughly $30 million a year. Boyd and Blades sold the company to the Sierra On-Line division of CUC International in 1997, then went on to found MoveOn.org.
Why did Microsoft build 3D Pipes in the first place?
3D Pipes was an advertisement. Windows NT 3.5, released in 1994, shipped with OpenGL support, and the team that built it had a presentation problem. As Raymond Chen of Microsoft told the story on The Old New Thing in 2024, "there was nothing in the product that let the user know that this feature even existed".
A full 3D application was too risky that close to release, because a bug in it could hold up the whole operating system. A screensaver was safe. If it fell over, the desktop came back and nothing else was harmed.
So the Windows OpenGL group ran an internal screensaver contest, with the winner to be voted on and shipped. The entries included 3D Text, 3D Flying Objects, 3D Maze and 3D Pipes. Marketing liked them enough that Microsoft shipped all of them instead of just the winner.
Pipes drew an endless branching network of plumbing, changing color at every joint and occasionally using a Utah Teapot as a connector, an in joke aimed at anyone who had sat through a computer graphics course. It stayed in Windows through 95, 98, 2000 and XP, and was removed in Windows Vista.
Do Windows 11 and macOS still have screensavers in 2026?
Yes, which surprises people who assume the feature was deleted. In Windows 11 it sits under Settings, then Personalization, then Lock screen, then Screen saver. The options are None, Blank, Bubbles, Mystify, Photos and Ribbons, and the default is None.
None of the OpenGL classics came back. Bubbles and Ribbons date from the Windows Vista era, and 3D Pipes, 3D Maze, 3D Text and 3D Flying Objects have never been restored. Windows also ties the setting to sign-in behavior, so picking a screensaver can change when the machine asks for a password again.
Apple went the other way and made the screensaver a selling point. macOS ships the slow motion aerial videos that play on an idle Apple TV, grouped as landscape, cityscape, underwater and earth, and the clip fades into the desktop wallpaper at login.
Burn-in has also come back. OLED panels age unevenly where a static image sits, which is why monitor makers ship pixel shift and panel refresh features and tell owners to leave them on. On an OLED desk monitor, a dark screensaver is once again doing the job it was invented for.
What killed the paid screensaver market?
Three things, roughly in order. LCD monitors replaced CRTs through the late 1990s and 2000s, and an LCD has no phosphor to burn. It can hold a faint image after a very long static display, but that fades by itself rather than scarring the glass.
Power management finished the job. Rather than run an animation to keep the tube busy, operating systems learned to cut power to the monitor after a set idle period, which saves electricity instead of spending it. Turn off the display replaced run a screensaver as the sensible default.
Then the software became free. Once Windows and the Mac both shipped screensavers in the box, the case for buying a boxed set of animations collapsed. Berkeley Systems had built a $30 million business on a product that operating system vendors proceeded to give away.
The habit died with it. In the 1990s the screensaver you chose was a small piece of office identity, filed next to the desktop wallpaper and the mouse pad. Downloading one from a stranger's website was also a dependable way to end up with something like BonziBuddy riding along inside the installer.
Where can you run After Dark and 3D Pipes today?
After Dark has not been sold as a new product in decades. Berkeley Systems went to Sierra On-Line in 1997, the screensaver line stopped there, and nobody has shipped a new version since, so there is nothing to buy.
The originals survive anyway. The Internet Archive hosts the After Dark releases as downloadable software, and front-end developer Bryan Braun rebuilt Flying Toasters and several sibling modules in pure CSS, so they run in a browser with nothing to install. Community projects have done the same for 3D Pipes and 3D Maze.
For the real binaries on real hardware, the route is the one that works for running 90s PC software on Windows 11: a virtual machine with a period operating system, which is also the only way to see these modules at the resolution they were drawn for. Most of them were drawn for the desktop that shipped on the night Windows 95 launched.
One paid screensaver outlived the extinction. SereneScreen Marine Aquarium, written by former Air Force pilot Jim Sachs and first released in July 2000, is still sold and still updated at $14.95. A digital fish tank has now outlasted the entire industry that surrounded it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did screensavers stop being necessary?
Screensavers existed to prevent phosphor burn-in on CRT monitors, and the LCD panels that replaced CRTs through the late 1990s and 2000s have no phosphor to damage. Operating systems also began switching the display off after an idle period instead of animating it, which saves power rather than using it. OLED panels can age unevenly, so modern monitors handle the same problem with pixel shift and panel refresh instead.
Who made the Flying Toasters screensaver?
Flying Toasters was a module in After Dark, the screensaver published by Berkeley Systems of Berkeley, California, which reached the Macintosh in 1989 and Windows in 1991. Programmer Jack Eastman drew the winged toasters after a late night walk to his kitchen, as he told Low End Mac in 2007. Berkeley Systems was sold to the Sierra On-Line division of CUC International in 1997 and After Dark has not been sold as a new product since.
Can you still get 3D Pipes on Windows 11?
Not from Microsoft. 3D Pipes shipped with Windows from NT 3.5 in 1994 through Windows XP, was removed in Windows Vista, and Windows 11 offers only None, Blank, Bubbles, Mystify, Photos and Ribbons. Community recreations of 3D Pipes run in a browser or as a standalone download, and the original still runs inside a virtual machine with a period version of Windows.