Afterglow

Every once in awhile something comes along that is completely unnecessarily, accomplishes nothing, but is too delightful to not check out. macOS has featured built-in screen savers since the earliest builds of Mac OS X and there are plenty of excellent ones (I prefer Flurry myself.) In the days of classic Mac OS, there wasn’t a built-in option and After Dark by Berkeley Systems was a popular choice with numerous sequels, spin-offs, and reboots. Jeff Halter found a way to bridge the gap with Afterglow, a free app and screen saver that lets you run old After Dark modules on modern Macs. The copy on Afterglow’s main page explains the motivation way better than I could: In the ’90s, Berkeley Systems’ After Dark screen savers were ubiquitous: Flying Toasters, Fish, and Starry Skylines animated across computer screens in school labs, homes, and offices everywhere. They served a practical purpose in preventing burn-in on CRT monitors, but also entertained, with animations that could be…