What the flying toasters screensaver is
The original After Dark artwork is trademarked, so nothing here is copied from it. These are original toaster shapes — a chromed body, a slot, a lever, a highlight down one side — with wings that flap about the shoulder. The homage is the motion, not the pixels.
Toasters and toast drift from the top right toward the bottom left at slightly different rates, which is the diagonal drift the original used and the thing that makes it recognisable at a glance.
- Pure nostalgia on an office display or a spare monitor
- A conversation piece on a screen at an event
- A light-hearted idle screen that people actually stop and look at
Flying toasters, online and free
Toaster count runs from four to forty. Around a dozen matches the density of the original; forty on a large display is a swarm.
The wings beat at a different rate per toaster, so the flock never falls into step.
How to run the flying toasters 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.