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A terminal screensaver that turns idle time into ambient art.

Every OS has a screensaver. The terminal had nothing — until now.

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Scenes

drift ships 11 scenes and 9 built-in themes. They cycle automatically or you can lock to one.

waveform — braille sine waves that breathe	constellation — stars drift and connect
rain — katakana characters fall in columns	particles — a flow field of drifting glyphs
pipes — box-drawing pipes snake across the screen and wrap at the edges	maze — a perfect maze builds itself, holds, then dissolves and regenerates
life — Conway's Game of Life; cells flash bright on birth, age through the palette, reset when the grid stagnates	clock — current time in large braille digits, styled in the active theme, with the date below
orrery — a stylized solar system with a fixed sun, concentric orbit rings, and braille-rendered planets	starfield — classic 3-D star warp; stars accelerate toward you from the centre, brightening and leaving trails as they approach
dvd — the classic bouncing logo; changes palette color on each wall bounce and flashes bright on a corner hit

Themes

Nine built-in themes matched to popular terminal colorschemes.

cosmic · nord · dracula · catppuccin · gruvbox · forest · wildberries · mono · rosepine

drift list themes    # preview all themes with color swatches

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Installation

Option 1 — Homebrew (macOS and Linux)

brew install phlx0/drift/drift

Option 2 — AUR (Arch Linux)

yay -S drift-bin   # or: paru -S drift-bin

Option 3 — Nix flake

nix run github:phlx0/drift

Or add to your configuration:

inputs.drift.url = "github:phlx0/drift";

Option 4 — Pre-built binary (no Go required)

1. Go to the Releases page.

2. Download the archive for your platform:

   OS	Chip	File
   macOS	Apple Silicon (M1/M2/M3)	drift_darwin_arm64.tar.gz
   macOS	Intel	drift_darwin_amd64.tar.gz
   Linux	x86-64	drift_linux_amd64.tar.gz
   Linux	ARM64	drift_linux_arm64.tar.gz
   Windows	x86-64	drift_windows_amd64.zip

3. Extract and move it somewhere on your PATH:

   tar -xzf drift_darwin_arm64.tar.gz
   sudo mv drift /usr/local/bin/
   drift version

Option 5 — Go install

go install github.com/phlx0/drift@latest

Make sure Go's bin directory is on your PATH:

# add to ~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc
export PATH="$PATH:$(go env GOPATH)/bin"

Option 6 — Build from source

git clone https://github.com/phlx0/drift
cd drift
go install .

Requires Go 1.23+. No C compiler or CGO needed.

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Shell integration

Shell integration is what makes drift a real screensaver — your shell detects idleness and launches drift automatically. Press any key to return to your prompt.

Zsh

# add to ~/.zshrc
export DRIFT_TIMEOUT=120   # seconds of inactivity (default: 120)
eval "$(drift shell-init zsh)"

Bash

# add to ~/.bashrc
export DRIFT_TIMEOUT=120   # seconds of inactivity (default: 120)
eval "$(drift shell-init bash)"

Fish

# add to ~/.config/fish/conf.d/drift.fish
set -x DRIFT_TIMEOUT 120   # seconds of inactivity (default: 120)
drift shell-init fish | source

Windows

Shell integration is not available on Windows. Run drift directly from any terminal (Windows Terminal, PowerShell, cmd) to start it immediately, or use drift --showcase to browse interactively. Press esc to exit.

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Usage

drift                            start immediately (shell integration mode)
drift --scene waveform           lock to a specific scene
drift --theme catppuccin         override the color theme
drift --duration 30              cycle scenes every 30 seconds
drift --showcase                 browse all scenes and themes interactively

drift list scenes                list all available scenes
drift list themes                list themes with color swatches
drift shell-init zsh|bash|fish   print shell integration snippet
drift config                     show effective configuration
drift config --init              write default config to ~/.config/drift/config.toml
drift version                    print version info

Flag	Default	Description
--scene, -s	cycle all	lock to a specific scene
--theme, -t	cosmic	color theme
--fps	30	target frame rate
--duration	60	seconds per scene, 0 = no cycling
--showcase	false	interactive browser: ↑↓/ws scene · ←→/ad theme · esc quit

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Configuration

drift config --init   # writes ~/.config/drift/config.toml

[engine]
fps              = 30
cycle_seconds    = 60    # 0 = stay on one scene
fade_seconds     = 0.3   # fade-to-black between scenes, 0 = instant cut
scenes           = "all"
theme            = "cosmic"
shuffle          = true
hide_tmux_status = false

[scene.constellation]
star_count      = 80
connect_radius  = 0.18   # connection threshold as a fraction of screen diagonal (0.0–1.0)
twinkle         = true   # animate star brightness; false = steady glow
max_connections = 4      # max lines drawn from each star

[scene.rain]
charset = "ｱｲｳｴｵｶｷｸｹｺｻｼｽｾｿﾀﾁﾂﾃﾄﾅﾆﾇﾈﾉ0123456789"
density = 0.4
speed   = 1.0

[scene.particles]
count    = 120
gravity  = 0.0   # downward acceleration in cells/s²; negative pulls upward
friction = 0.98  # velocity damping per frame (0.0 = instant stop, 1.0 = no damping)

[scene.waveform]
layers    = 3    # number of overlapping sine waves (1–3)
amplitude = 0.70
speed     = 1.0

[scene.orrery]
bodies      = 8    # number of planets (4–8)
trail_decay = 2.4  # seconds for orbit trails to fade; lower = shorter trails

[scene.pipes]
heads         = 6
turn_chance   = 0.15
speed         = 1.0
reset_seconds = 45.0

[scene.maze]
pause_seconds = 3.0
fade_seconds  = 2.0
speed         = 1.0

[scene.life]
density       = 0.35
speed         = 1.0
reset_seconds = 30.0

[scene.clock]
show_date = true  # show date below the time

[scene.starfield]
count = 200   # number of stars
speed = 1.0   # warp speed multiplier

[scene.dvd]
speed = 1.0     # movement speed multiplier
label = "drift" # text displayed inside the bouncing logo

Custom themes

Define your own themes in config.toml under [theme.<name>]. Custom themes appear alongside built-ins in drift list themes and in showcase mode navigation.

[theme.terminal]
bright  = "#ffffff"
palette = ["#ff5555", "#50fa7b", "#f1fa8c", "#bd93f9"]
dim     = ["#3d0000", "#003d00", "#3d3d00", "#1e003d"]

Key	Description
bright	Near-white highlight color (#RRGGBB)
palette	Accent colors — scenes index with palette[i % len(palette)]
dim	Darker variants for trails and depth — must be the same length as palette

Then use it like any built-in: drift --theme terminal.

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Showcase mode

drift --showcase runs drift continuously — nothing exits it except esc. Use it to browse scenes and themes or leave it running on a visible window.

Key	Action
↑ / w	previous scene
↓ / s	next scene
← / a	previous theme
→ / d	next theme
esc / q / ctrl+c	quit

A status bar shows the current scene and theme for 3 seconds after each keypress, then fades out.

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Troubleshooting

Config changes have no effect

Run drift config to check whether your config file is being found:

Config file: /Users/you/.config/drift/config.toml (not found — using defaults; run 'drift config --init' to create it)

If the file is missing, create it with drift config --init. If it exists but changes still don't apply, check for a TOML syntax error — drift config will print the parse error if there is one.

drift doesn't activate automatically

Make sure the shell integration is sourced in your rc file and that DRIFT_TIMEOUT (or TMOUT in zsh) is set:

export DRIFT_TIMEOUT=120
eval "$(drift shell-init zsh)"   # or bash / fish

Then open a new terminal session for it to take effect.

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Contributing

New scenes and themes are very welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md for the development guide.

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Star History

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MIT License · made by phlx0

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