Ambient Digital Rain for macOS
v1.3 · macOS 14 Sonoma or later · Free forever
What's New
A focused performance and reliability release — smoother animation, lower CPU, and better multi-monitor support.
Glyphs are now pre-rendered into a bitmap atlas and drawn as GPU-accelerated image blits — eliminating per-frame Core Text layout calls. Smoother animation at all density settings.
Frame rate raised to 60fps. The previous 30fps cap caused uneven pacing on high-refresh monitors (144Hz, 165Hz), which appeared as choppiness. Now smooth on all display types.
Fixed a bug where the animation could continue running after the screensaver was dismissed, causing persistent high CPU usage. CPU now returns to near zero immediately on dismissal.
New toggle in Settings → General to restrict the clock and message overlays to your primary display. Secondary displays show rain only.
Settings are now organised into tabs — General, Message, Clock, and Import/Export. Controls for disabled features are automatically grayed out, and tabs slide between pages with a smooth animation.
Cyph3rfall checks GitHub for new releases on every launch and shows a banner in the menu when one is available. You can also trigger a manual check from the About panel at any time.
Save your entire configuration to a JSON file and restore it whenever you like. Visual settings are included; your password lock and keyboard shortcut are excluded for security.
New Wide / Narrow toggle in the General tab. Narrow packs columns 25% closer together for a denser, more intense rain — Wide restores the original spacing.
A new checkbox in the Clock tab tints the clock overlay to match your active colour preset — head colour for the time, foreground colour for the date. Toggle it off for the classic neutral white.
Features
No Dock icon, no clutter. Access everything from the Ξ icon in your menu bar. Launches at login, stays out of the way.
Starts automatically after a configurable idle timeout — 1 minute to 30 minutes, or never. Also activates on system sleep.
Record a system-wide keyboard shortcut to launch the screensaver instantly from any app, no menu required.
Covers every connected display simultaneously, with smooth fade-in and fade-out transitions across all screens.
Green, Amber, Cyan, White, Purple, Blue, Red, Orange, and Pink. Each preset has a coordinated trail and head glyph colour.
Give every falling stream its own randomly chosen colour. Re-randomised each time a stream wraps — always in motion.
Hide a phrase in the rain. Characters materialise one by one as falling columns pass through them, then fade as a group. Includes built-in presets.
Display the time and date in a customisable font, subtly rendered over the rain with slow drift to prevent screen burn.
Require Touch ID, Face ID, or Apple Watch authentication to dismiss. Lock arms automatically once your idle threshold is met.
Speed, density, glyph size, trail length, glow, Classic Dense Mode — tweak everything with a live preview in the settings panel.
Pure Swift and AppKit. No third-party dependencies, no screensaver framework workarounds. Just a native Mac app doing its thing.
Checks GitHub for new releases on launch and shows a banner in the menu when one is available. Trigger a manual check any time from the About panel.
Switch between Wide and Narrow column density. Narrow packs columns 25% closer together for a denser, more intense rain effect.
Optionally tie the clock overlay colour to your active rain preset. Toggle it on and the clock tints itself to match — toggle it off for the classic neutral white.
Export your entire configuration to a JSON file and import it back any time. Great for backing up your setup or sharing settings between Macs.
The Story
Cyph3rfall started as a simple question: why isn't there a good Matrix rain screensaver for modern macOS? I had used MatrixMania on Windows for years and missed that feeling. So I decided to build my own — the problem being that I'm not a software developer.
Every feature in this app was conceived and directed by me, and implemented in close collaboration with Claude Code by Anthropic. I described what I wanted in plain language. Claude Code wrote the Swift, caught the bugs, and optimised the rendering. This is what building software looks like when AI handles the code and a human handles the vision.
I think of it as dAId — Directed AI Development. Not vibe coding, where you blindly accept whatever the AI produces. Not traditional development, where you write every line yourself. Something in between: the human holds the vision, makes the decisions, and owns the product. The AI handles the implementation. It is very much a work in progress — and that's exactly the point.
Installation
Cyph3rfall-v1.3.dmg from the
Releases page.
Requirements
Tested on