SpaceScreensaver

A Windows screensaver showing random images (and video stills), with an info box showing where the image was found.

This can be useful to see additional context about an image, especially if a folder contains many photos in a tree-like structure with descriptive names (in my case, a collection of spaceflight images; hence the name).

_{^{Here, the randomizer ended up selecting a video and displaying a random frame from said video. Note how the infobox was placed in the least interesting corner of the image.}}

Settings

• List of directories to choose images from
• List of subdirectories not to take images from
• Time between subsequent images
• Whether to show only high-resolution images (i.e. more than half the screen size in pixels)

Settings are stored in Appdata/Local/Jonathan's Programma's/SpaceScreensaver/settings.json.

There are 3 ways to open the Settings GUI:

• Just clicking "Settings..." in the Windows 'Screen Saver Settings' window. If you do not find this window, run control desk.cpl,,@screensaver using Win+R to open it.

• Right-click on SpaceScreensaver.scr and select "Configure".

• Running the command SpaceScreensaver.scr /c.

Installation

Recommended installation

1. Go to the 'releases' page here on GitHub and download the .zip file from the latest release.

2. Extract to a folder of your choice, where it can remain for eternity.

3. Right-click SpaceScreensaver.scr and select "Install". This opens the Windows 'Screen Saver Settings' window with SpaceScreensaver already selected.

4. Press "Apply". The screensaver is now selected.

You can now configure the screensaver to your liking, by clicking "Settings..." next to the dropdown menu. Be sure to click the green "Save settings" button before exiting the settings GUI.

Alternative: using RunSaver

Click to show alternative installation method

If you are (righteously so) paranoid about running other people's compiled executables, then you can also run the source code directly from GitHub.

Note that this will require a python environment with at least the packages from requirements.txt.

The simplest way is to use the 'RunSaver' tool as your screensaver, and in RunSaver's settings select the run.bat file. This effectively makes Windows run run.bat as a screensaver. run.bat, in turn, activates the correct python environment and runs main.pyw.

1. Download the source code or clone this repository, and put it in a folder where it can remain for eternity.

2. Download RunSaver (this is a zip file containing RunCheck.zip and RunSaver.zip; we only need RunSaver), and extract the RunSaver.zip file to a folder where it can remain for eternity.

3. In the RunSaver folder, right-click on RunSaver.scr and select "Install". This opens the Windows 'Screen Saver Settings' window with RunSaver already selected (if this window does not open, run control desk.cpl,,@screensaver using Win+R).

4. Click "Settings..." to open RunSaver's settings. There, click "Browse" and select the run.bat file from this repository. Click 'Ok' to exit RunSaver's settings.

You can now configure the screensaver to your liking by running python source/main.pyw /c.