What the christmas screensaver is
The tree is five tiers of drooping boughs rather than one flat triangle, and each tier casts a shadow on the one below it. That shadow is the whole difference between a Christmas tree and a green shape, and it holds up from a phone to a wall-mounted television.
The lights twinkle independently rather than in step, each on its own phase and its own rate. Synchronised blinking is the tell that gives away a cheap version of this — real string lights never agree with each other.
Snow falls in three layers of depth, and the furthest layer is drawn behind the tree. That one detail is what makes the tree read as something standing in the snow rather than a picture pasted on top of it.
- A festive display in a shop, an office or a front window
- A background for a Christmas stream or a family gathering
- A seasonal idle screen on a spare monitor or tablet
Christmas tree screensaver, free and online
The snowfall control is shared with the snow screensaver, so you can have a light dusting behind the tree or a heavy fall. Everything else — the star, the bulbs, the drift banked against the trunk — scales to whatever screen it lands on.
Nothing plays sound and nothing is downloaded — it is a page, which makes it easy to leave up on a shop display for a month without anyone worrying about what is running.
How to run the christmas screensaver full screen
Press the fullscreen button on the player, or the F key. Escape brings you back to the page. On a desktop browser F11 does the same job and hides the browser’s own toolbars as well, which is what you want on a display that is going to be left running.
Everything you change in the settings is written into the address bar as you change it, so the version you have set up is a link. Bookmark it, or send it to whoever is running the screen. Space pauses and resumes at any time.