This New App Brings 1990s 'After Dark' Screen Savers to Modern macOS

[DocMultimedia]

Are you on Golden Gate? Halter mentioned that he might have a fix for some issues he's hearing about: https://bitbang.social/@halcyon/117170046651250799

Ah. Yes, that would explain it. Luckily it runs well enough.

 

[MacFan782040]

Hearing the flying toasters anthem music was a deep memory just unlocked.

 

[Amazing Iceman]

LOL! I remember AfterDark. How about they bring back Tiny Elvis?

 

[svish]

Nice to see this. Will give it a try soon.

 

[Quicksilver867]

Ah. Screensavers. Just in time for the arrival of burn-in prone OLED displays 🙂

From CRT to OLED. We've come full circle.

 

[computerwiz222]

Very cool.

 

[eifelbube]

Oh, I loved the AD screensaver!!

Now that I read this, I am hoping for an update that has Flying Data Centers that I can blow up one-by-one with a press of the DELETE key 😊

 

[JosephAW]

Had the Disney ones way back. 🙄

 

[dmr727]

Lunatic Fringe! This is very cool.

 

[adyonka]

One can also enjoy After Dark modules in the browser, if that’s more your thing.

After Dark Screensavers in CSS

Relive classic 1990s Mac and PC screensavers like Flying Toasters and Aquatic Realm, remade using modern CSS techniques like animations and transforms.

www.bryanbraun.com

 

[jennyp]

OMG After Dark! Memories!

 

[Jeff Halter]

Ah. Yes, that would explain it. Luckily it runs well enough.

👋 Hello, I'm the developer.

There's a build with a potential fix for Golden Gate here:

https://morphing.cloud/afterglow/test-builds/Afterglow-golden-gate-pane-fix-20260827.dmg

This fixed a crash in my own GG VM, but I'm looking for some additional positive feedback from testers on whether this fixes the issue before I cut a 1.0.1 release.

If you could give this a shot when you have a chance and let me know one way or another, that would be super helpful. Thanks!

 

[Jeff Halter]

fun fact. In college I wrote the Points of View module for After Dark 4.0. Its just 3d objects made of dots rotating / bouncing around the screen.

Not very impressive these days.

👋 Hi, Afterglow developer here.

I think Points of View is awesome! Thanks for your work on this.

 

[Jeff Halter]

Like a dummy, I downloaded the app, but before even booting it I went on a wild goose chase to find some After Dark disk images.

Everything out there is an ISO formatted in HFS, which hasn't been supported by MacOS since… 10.13 or something? So I blew half an hour of screwing around with CLI tools before giving up and booting the app to see if it had any suggestions. Of course everything “just works” out of the box. (okay, it’s a little glitchy, I don’t think this is 1.0 quite yet.)

Anyway… everything about this app is impressive, but the fact that it can read and decode HFS ISO’s really puts it over the top. Hats off, salute, wow dang awesome.

Hi, Afterglow developer here.

Any specific feedback on glitchy stuff would be appreciated!

Also, credit to MacPaw's Unarchiver for performing most of the heavy lifting around module extraction from a wide range of archive formats.

 

[Non-Euclidean]

There was a user-configurable screensaver on my late-90's PC that I have been trying to find. It might have been called Purple? It made fantastic geometric shapes and patterns with a myriad of colors. I have never seen anything as good since ( in fact I am boggled at how elementary Apple's screensavers are). Does anyone know what that was?

I don't remember that, but I do remember the 3D Pipes screensaver for PCs.
Also a Dr. Who screensaver that was a starry background with the theme song looping.

I need to see if I still have my B5 screensaver somewhere.

 

[BGPL]

I spent a full night of pizza delivery tips to buy after dark, but I had to have it. No regrets whatsoever.

 

[dricci]

This is amazing @Jeff Halter . I love preservation projects like this. I know they would be completely non-functional, but is there any way to load the "After Dark Online" news modules and at least see the default splash screens from them? I remember getting a boxed copy of 4.0 w/ After Dark Online back in the day, and it fetching new news articles each time I dialed in to the internet...

 

[ambientdaw]

I don't remember that, but I do remember the 3D Pipes screensaver for PCs.
Also a Dr. Who screensaver that was a starry background with the theme song looping.

I need to see if I still have my B5 screensaver somewhere.

very cool, I remember that! I wonder if it was part of the same program. Perhaps the module or preset was called Purple

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

Brings back so many memories. Love it! Developed out of pure passion.

 

[Jacquesass]

Lunatic Fringe was surprisingly fun to play. This is amazing.

 

[NappyHead]

Still looking for the perfect Matrix screensaver.....

 

[r6girl]

OMG this includes Lunatic Fringe? That was one of my favorite studying distractions in college...

 

[Jeff Halter]

This is amazing @Jeff Halter . I love preservation projects like this. I know they would be completely non-functional, but is there any way to load the "After Dark Online" news modules and at least see the default splash screens from them? I remember getting a boxed copy of 4.0 w/ After Dark Online back in the day, and it fetching new news articles each time I dialed in to the internet...

I haven't explored those modules yet, but after the initial bugfix dust settles I'll check them out. It'd be fun to wire it up to some historical source of news feeds via the Wayback Machine.

 

[Cloudane]

OMG yes

I'm doing a bit of a nostalgia project as I found my original gen 1 Pentium (90MHz) and board, grabbed a fairly time period suitable sound and graphics card, beige case, and got MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.1 working on it. So the AD screensavers were going to be part of my journey already. But it's really cool you can run them on a Mac!

 

[cstout]

👋 Hello, I'm the developer.

There's a build with a potential fix for Golden Gate here:

https://morphing.cloud/afterglow/test-builds/Afterglow-golden-gate-pane-fix-20260827.dmg

This fixed a crash in my own GG VM, but I'm looking for some additional positive feedback from testers on whether this fixes the issue before I cut a 1.0.1 release.

If you could give this a shot when you have a chance and let me know one way or another, that would be super helpful. Thanks!

This build allowed me to use it on 26.6.2 whereas the current release would only load a black screen.

Any updates on multi-monitor support? I'm thrilled to have this load on one screen, but it'd be even more exciting to have it on both monitors! 🙂 Thank you for making this possible.