Years ago I was introduced to the fantastic System47 LCARS screensaver through a random Google search. For years this was my goto screensaver of choice, but the project hasn’t been maintained in years, and with the recent death of Adobe Flash (which was a requirement for this screensaver) running it on MacOS is no longer possible (not to metntion M1 Macbooks).
While screensavers are somewhat out of fashion, I have always been a fan of the nostalgia that this one brings about. Not only that, but it’s a highly accurate depiction of the version used on the Star Trek series’, so I was very pleased when I learned that a developer on Github know as webOSpinn had created an HTML version of this screensaver using the now defunct Google Swiffy runtime.
I started by cloning the repository:
git clone https://github.com/webOSpinn/System47
This provides several versions of the HTML code, converted using different versions of the Swiffy runtime. I was interested in the latest version of which there are two files:
stan@Pidgeotto ~/System47 (git)-[master] % ls -l | grep 8.0
-rw-r--r--@ 1 stan staff 1519622 25 Aug 09:28 v8.0.html
-rw-r--r-- 1 stan staff 1453993 25 Aug 09:28 v8.0_noaudio.html
Next, we need a program which can take a website and display it as a webpage. Thankfully another developer, liquidx, has just the thing – WebViewScreensaver. Installation insructions are included, however as I use homebrew to manage my Mac, installation was incredibly straightforward:
stan@Pidgeotto ~/System47 (git)-[master] % brew install webviewscreensaver Updating Homebrew… ==> Auto-updated Homebrew! Updated 1 tap (homebrew/core). ==> Updated Formulae Updated 221 formulae. ==> Downloading https://github.com/liquidx/webviewscreensaver/releases/download/v2.2.1/WebViewScreenSaver-2.2.1.zip ==> Downloading from https://github-releases.githubusercontent.com/847378/d25f5c80-dfe2-11eb-816c-78779ac366b9?X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAIWNJYAX4CSVEH53A%2F20210825%2Fus-east ################################################################## 100.0% ==> Installing Cask webviewscreensaver ==> Moving Screen Saver 'WebViewScreenSaver.saver' to '/Users/stan/Library/Screen Savers/WebViewScreenSaver.saver' 🍺 webviewscreensaver was successfully installed!
With this installed, a new screensaver is now listed under screensavers:
It won’t work immediately at first – I had to override Gatekeeper (in System Preferences > Security & Privacy > General). After that, I configured the path to the v8.0_noaudio.html under Screen Saver Options…
And Voila! A working Star Trek LCARS screensaver on an M1 MacBook Air.
September 14, 2022
You’ll be glad to hear that the original developer for System47, MeWho, is working on this again… not only for a screensaver (currently just Windows) but a browser-based app called Starfield 47. Just FYI! https://www.mewho.com/
October 5, 2022
This is awesome to hear! Thanks so much for letting me know, I’ll be sure to check that out!