WebViewScreenSaver

A macOS screen saver that displays a web page or a series of web pages.

Installation

• Using brew.*

brew install --cask webviewscreensaver --no-quarantine

• Directly from the releases page. Unpack and double click to install.*

• From source (requires Xcode):

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/liquidx/webviewscreensaver/master/install-from-source.sh)"

*Note: The package is adhoc signed (since v2.2.1, previously unsigned).

--no-quarantine disables macOS's Gatekeeper during installation.

Otherwise when opening it the first time you will get multiple security prompts about Apple not being able to verify the software.
Hit ok (cancel in older macOS) and go to Privacy & Security and scroll to bottom.
You'll find a section explaining that "WebViewScreenSaver.saver" was blocked click Open Anyway.
Upon returning to screensaver options you'll get a second prompt that can be confirmed by clicking Open.

Alternative if you installed it via direct download run the folllowing command to remove the file from quarantine:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine WebViewScreenSaver.saver

Configuration

Open up System Preferences > Desktop and Screen Saver > Screen Saver and WebViewScreenSaver should be at the end of the list.

In the addresses section fill in as many websites as you want the screensaver to cycle through and the amount of time to pause on each.

Tip: To edit a selected row, click once or tap Enter or Tab.

Passing in a negative time value e.g. -1 will notify the screensaver to remain on that website indefinitely.

Need some website ideas? Check out suggestions in the examples. (feel free to suggest others)

The example file can also be used with the fetch URLs feature: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/liquidx/webviewscreensaver/master/examples.json

Local absolute paths can also be used as an address with or without the file:// schema.

E.g. file:///Users/myUser/mySreensaver/index.html

Note: If you are running Catalina or newer the provided path cannot reside in your personal folders which require extra permissions (this includes things like Downloads, Documents or Desktop) but can be anywhere else in your user's folder.

Configuration for IT

If you are interested in scripting configuration changes, WebViewScreenSaver, like most other screensavers, makes use of the macOS defaults system.

This can be queried and updated via:

/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c 'Print' ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSaver/Data/Library/Preferences/ByHost/WebViewScreenSaver.*.plist

Depending on how it was installed, which macOS version and which architecture you are running you might find the plist under the following paths:

ls ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSaver/Data/Library/Preferences/ByHost/WebViewScreenSaver.*
ls ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSaver/Data/Library/Preferences/net.liquidx.WebViewScreenSaver
ls ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.ScreenSaver.Engine.legacyScreenSaver-x86_64/Data/Library/Preferences/net.liquidx.WebViewScreenSaver
ls ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/WebViewScreenSaver.* # Pre macOS 10.15

Any .plist editor can be used including built-in PlistBuddy and plutil.

License

Code is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 License.