1XScreenSaver(1) General Commands Manual XScreenSaver(1)
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6 xscreensaver-settings - configure and control the xscreensaver daemon
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9 xscreensaver-settings [-display host:display.screen] [-prefs] [-debug]
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12 The xscreensaver-settings program is a graphical front-end for setting
13 the parameters used by the xscreensaver(1) daemon. It is a tool for
14 editing the ~/.xscreensaver file, and for demoing the various display
15 modes.
16 The main window consists of a menu bar and two tabbed pages. The first
18 page is for editing the list of demos, and the second is for editing
19 various other parameters of the screensaver.
20
22 All of these commands are on either the File or Help menus:
23 Blank Screen Now
26 Activates the background xscreensaver daemon, which will then run a
27 demo at random. This is the same as running xscreensaver-com‐
28 mand(1) with the -activate option.
29 Lock Screen Now
32 Just like Blank Screen Now, except the screen will be locked as
33 well (even if it is not configured to lock all the time.) This is
34 the same as running xscreensaver-command(1) with the -lock option.
35 Kill Daemon
38 If the xscreensaver daemon is running on this screen, kill it.
39 This is the same as running xscreensaver-command(1) with the -exit
40 option.
41 Restart Daemon
44 If the xscreensaver daemon is running on this screen, kill it.
45 Then launch it again. This is the same as doing "xscreensaver-com‐
46 mand --exit" followed by "xscreensaver".
47 Note that it is not the same as doing "xscreensaver-command
49 --restart".
50 Exit
53 Exits the xscreensaver-settings program (this program) without af‐
54 fecting the background xscreensaver daemon, if any.
55 About...
58 Displays the version number of this program, xscreensaver-settings.
59 Documentation...
62 Opens up a web browser looking at the XScreenSaver web page, where
63 you can find online copies of the xscreensaver(1), xscreen‐
64 saver-settings(1), and xscreensaver-command(1) manuals.
65
67 This page contains a list of the names of the various display modes, a
68 preview area, and some fields that let you configure screen saver be‐
69 havior.
70 Mode
73 This option menu controls the activation behavior of the screen
74 saver. The options are:
75 Disable Screen Saver
78 Don't ever blank the screen, and don't ever allow the monitor
79 to power down.
80 Blank Screen Only
83 When blanking the screen, just go black: don't run any graph‐
84 ics.
85 Only One Screen Saver
88 When blanking the screen, only ever use one particular display
89 mode (the one selected in the list.)
90 Random Screen Saver
93 When blanking the screen, select a random display mode from
94 among those that are enabled and applicable. If there are mul‐
95 tiple monitors connected, run a different display mode on each
96 one. This is the default.
97 Random Same Saver
100 This is just like Random Screen Saver, except that the same
101 randomly-chosen display mode will be run on all monitors, in‐
102 stead of different ones on each.
103 Demo List
106 Double-clicking in the list on the left will let you try out the
107 indicated demo. The screen will go black, and the program will run
108 in full-screen mode, just as it would if the xscreensaver daemon
109 had launched it. Clicking the mouse again will stop the demo and
110 un-blank the screen.
111 Single-clicking in the list will run it in the small preview pane
113 on the right. (But beware: many of the display modes behave some‐
114 what differently when running in full-screen mode, so the scaled-
115 down view might not give an accurate impression.)
116 When Mode is set to Random Screen Saver, each name in the list has
118 a checkbox next to it: this controls whether this display mode is
119 enabled. If it is unchecked, then that mode will not be chosen.
120 (Though you can still run it explicitly by double-clicking on its
121 name.)
122 Arrow Buttons
125 Beneath the list are a pair of up and down arrows. Clicking on the
126 down arrow will select the next item in the list, and then run it
127 in full-screen mode, just as if you had double-clicked on it. The
128 up arrow goes the other way. This is just a shortcut for trying
129 out all of the display modes in turn.
130 Blank After
133 After the user has been idle this long, the xscreensaver daemon
134 will blank the screen.
135 Cycle After
138 After the screensaver has been running for this long, the currently
139 running graphics demo will be killed, and a new one started. If
140 this is 0, then the graphics demo will never be changed: only one
141 demo will run until the screensaver is deactivated by user activ‐
142 ity.
143 If there are multiple screens, the savers are staggered slightly so
145 that while they all change every cycle minutes, they don't all
146 change at the same time.
147 Lock Screen
150 When this is checked, the screen will be locked when it activates.
151 Lock Screen After
154 This controls the length of the "grace period" between when the
155 screensaver activates, and when the screen becomes locked. For ex‐
156 ample, if this is 5 minutes, and Blank After is 10 minutes, then
157 after 10 minutes, the screen would blank. If there was user activ‐
158 ity at 12 minutes, no password would be required to un-blank the
159 screen. But, if there was user activity at 15 minutes or later
160 (that is, Lock Screen After minutes after activation) then a pass‐
161 word would be required. The default is 0, meaning that if locking
162 is enabled, then a password will be required as soon as the screen
163 blanks.
164 Preview
167 This button, below the small preview window, runs the demo in full-
168 screen mode so that you can try it out. This is the same thing
169 that happens when you double-click an element in the list. Click
170 the mouse to dismiss the full-screen preview.
171 Settings
174 This button will pop up a dialog where you can configure settings
175 specific to the display mode selected in the list.
176
179 When you click on the Settings button on the Display Modes tab, a con‐
180 figuration dialog will pop up that lets you customize settings of the
181 selected display mode. Each display mode has its own custom configura‐
182 tion controls on the left side.
183 On the right side is a paragraph or two describing the display mode.
185 Below that is a Documentation button that will display the display
186 mode's manual page in a new window.
187 The Advanced button reconfigures the dialog box so that you can edit
189 the display mode's command line directly, instead of using the graphi‐
190 cal controls.
191
193 This tab lets you change various settings used by the xscreensaver dae‐
194 mon itself, as well as some global options shared by all of the display
195 modes.
196 Image Manipulation
198 Some of the graphics hacks manipulate images. These settings control
200 where those source images come from. The savers load images by running
201 the xscreensaver-getimage(6) and xscreensaver-getimage-file(6) pro‐
202 grams.
203 Grab Desktop Images
206 If this option is selected, then savers are allowed to manipu‐
207 late the desktop image, that is, a display mode might draw a
208 picture of your desktop melting, or being distorted in some
209 way. The security-paranoid might want to disable this option,
210 because if it is set, it means that the windows on your desktop
211 will occasionally be visible while your screen is locked. Oth‐
212 ers will not be able to do anything, but they may be able to
213 see whatever you left on your screen.
214 Grab Video Frames
217 If your system has a video capture device, selecting this op‐
218 tion may allow the image-manipulating modes to grab a still-
219 frame of video to operate on.
220 Choose Random Image
223 If this option is set, then the image-manipulating modes will
224 select a random image file to operate on, from the specified
225 source. That source may be a local directory, which will be
226 recursively searched for images. Or, it may be the URL of an
227 RSS or Atom feed (e.g., a Flickr gallery), in which case a ran‐
228 dom image from that feed will be selected instead. The con‐
229 tents of the feed will be cached locally and refreshed periodi‐
230 cally as needed.
231 If more than one of the above image-related options are selected,
233 then one will be chosen at random. If none of them are selected,
234 then an image of video colorbars will be used instead.
235 Text Manipulation
237 Some of the display modes display and manipulate text. The following
239 options control how that text is generated. The savers load text by
240 running the xscreensaver-text(6) program.
241 Host Name and Time
244 If this checkbox is selected, then the text used by the screen
245 savers will be the local host name, OS version, date, time, and
246 system load.
247 Text
250 If this checkbox is selected, then the literal text typed in
251 the field to its right will be used. If it contains % escape
252 sequences, they will be expanded as per strftime(2).
253 Text File
256 If this checkbox is selected, then the contents of the corre‐
257 sponding file will be displayed.
258 Program
261 If this checkbox is selected, then the given program will be
262 run, repeatedly, and its output will be displayed.
263 URL If this checkbox is selected, then the given web page will be
266 downloaded and displayed repeatedly. If the document contains
267 HTML, RSS, or Atom, it will be converted to plain-text first.
268 Note: this re-downloads the document every time the screen
270 saver runs out of text, so it will probably be hitting that web
271 server multiple times a minute.
272 Power Management Settings
274 These settings control whether, and when, your monitor powers down.
276 Power Management Enabled
279 Whether the monitor should be powered down after a period of
280 inactivity.
281 If this option is grayed out, it means your X server does not
283 support the XDPMS extension, and so control over the monitor's
284 power state is not available.
285 Standby After
288 If Power Management Enabled is selected, the monitor will go
289 black after this much idle time. (Graphics demos will stop
290 running, also.)
291 Suspend After
294 If Power Management Enabled is selected, the monitor will go
295 into power-saving mode after this much idle time. This dura‐
296 tion should be greater than or equal to Standby.
297 Off After
300 If Power Management Enabled is selected, the monitor will fully
301 power down after this much idle time. This duration should be
302 greater than or equal to Suspend.
303 Quick Power-off in Blank Only Mode
306 If the display mode is set to Blank Screen Only and this is
307 checked, then the monitor will be powered off immediately upon
308 blanking, regardless of the other power-management settings.
309 In this way, the power management idle-timers can be completely
310 disabled, but the screen will be powered off when black.
311 Blanking
313 These options control how the screen fades to or from black when a
315 screen saver begins or ends. Note: fading doesn't work with all video
316 drivers. In particular, it does not work on the 2020-vintage Raspberry
317 Pi.
318 Fade To Black When Blanking
321 If selected, then when the screensaver activates, the current
322 contents of the screen will fade to black instead of simply
323 winking out. A fade will also be done when switching from one
324 display mode to another.
325 Unfade From Black When Unblanking
328 The opposite: if selected, then when the screensaver deacti‐
329 vates, the original contents of the screen will fade in from
330 black instead of appearing immediately. This is only done if
331 Fade To Black is also selected.
332 Fade Duration
335 When fading or unfading are selected, this controls how long
336 the fade will take.
337 Theme
339 This option menu lists the color schemes available for use on the
340 unlock dialog.
341 There are more settings than these available, but these are the most
343 commonly used ones; see the manual for xscreensaver(1) for other param‐
344 eters that can be set by editing the ~/.xscreensaver file, or the X re‐
345 source database.
346
348 xscreensaver-settings accepts the following command line options.
349 -display host:display.screen
351 The X display to use. The xscreensaver-settings program will
352 open its window on that display, and also control the xscreen‐
353 saver daemon that is managing that same display.
354 -prefs Start up with the Advanced tab selected by default instead of
357 the Display Modes tab.
358 -debug Causes lots of diagnostics to be printed on stderr.
361 The xscreensaver and xscreensaver-settings processes must run on the
364 same machine, or at least, on two machines that share a file system.
365 When xscreensaver-settings writes a new version of the ~/.xscreensaver
366 file, xscreensaver needs to see that same file, or it won't work.
367
369 DISPLAY to get the default host and display number.
370 PATH to find the sub-programs to run. However, note that the sub-
372 programs are actually launched by the xscreensaver daemon, not
373 by xscreensaver-settings itself. So, what matters is what
374 $PATH that the xscreensaver program sees.
375 HOME for the directory in which to read and write the .xscreensaver
377 file.
378 XENVIRONMENT
380 to get the name of a resource file that overrides the global
381 resources stored in the RESOURCE_MANAGER property.
382 HTTP_PROXY, HTTPS_PROXY, http_proxy, or https_proxy
384 to get the default proxy host and port.
385
387 The latest version of xscreensaver, an online version of this manual,
388 and a FAQ can always be found at https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/
389
391 X(1), xscreensaver(1), xscreensaver-command(1), xscreensaver-getim‐
392 age(6), xscreensaver-getimage-file(6), xscreensaver-getimage-video(6),
393 xscreensaver-text(6)
394
396 Copyright © 1992-2021 by Jamie Zawinski. Permission to use, copy, mod‐
397 ify, distribute, and sell this software and its documentation for any
398 purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided that the above copy‐
399 right notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice
400 and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation. No rep‐
401 resentations are made about the suitability of this software for any
402 purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.
403
405 Jamie Zawinski <jwz@jwz.org>, 13-aug-1992.
406 Please let me know if you find any bugs or make any improvements.
408X Version 11 6.00-4.fc34 (05-May-2021) XScreenSaver(1)