ttysvr

Screensavers for your terminal. Start immediately or after a period of inactivity within a shell.

Uses bevy_ratatui_render, my bevy plugin that allows you to render a bevy application to the terminal using ratatui and ratatui-image.

Triggering the screensaver immediately works in any shell, triggering after a set period of inactivity is currently Zsh only.

installation

# cargo
cargo install --locked ttysvr

# homebrew
brew install cxreiff/tap/ttysvr

usage

Starts the screensaver immediately. If no variant is specified, one is randomly selected.

ttysvr [VARIANT]

Some variants have subvariants.

ttysvr [VARIANT] [SUBVARIANT]

Sets up the screensaver to activate after DELAY seconds of inactivity in your current shell session.

eval `ttysvr [VARIANT] --init [DELAY]`

Cancels the screensaver in your current shell session.

eval `ttysvr --cancel`

[!IMPORTANT] Note that the --init and --cancel options require being wrapped in eval and backticks. This is because activating the screensaver after a set period of inactivity relies on setting the TMOUT environment variable in your current shell, instead of the child shell created by the ttysvr process. Issues/PRs are greatly appreciated if somebody is aware of a better way of doing this!

variants

compatibility

zsh only

The screensaver delay works based on setting a session timeout and catching the ALRM signal in a way only compatible with ZSH. If you know a way to achieve something similar in another shell, please open an issue!

terminal

This requires that your terminal:

1. Supports 24bit color.
2. Has reasonably efficient rendering.

This includes a decent variety of terminals, but I have personally confirmed good results in the following:

• Alacritty (macOS, linux)
• Kitty (macOS)
• WezTerm (macOS)
• iTerm2 (macOS)