Muryan

Definitely one for the fern enthusiasts, Fronds is a screen saver that draws never-ending fractal ferns. New ferns gradually appear while the old ones slowly fade out.

Fronds is a homage to my old Windows screen saver Ephemera — I still remember its ferns mode fondly more than 20 years after I first released it.

Fronds uses IFS fractals to draw the ferns, which continues a long association for this type of fractal: the Barnsley fern is one of the classic examples of an IFS.

Requirements

• macOS 10·13 High Sierra or later.

Downloads

• Fronds — 139 kB

Gallery

Release Notes

• Version 1·1·0 — 16^th January 2023
  • Fronds is now built as a Universal Binary, meaning it will run natively on Apple Silicon Macs. This may result in a slight improvement in efficiency, but really shouldn’t work any differently.
  • Added a workaround to fix a problem with screen savers built using Xcode 14·2 failing to show the preview in System Preferences.
• Version 1·0·2 — 25^th September 2021
  • The Fronds screen saver is now signed and notarized by Apple, meaning it will run without trouble on recent versions of macOS.
  • This release is the same as 1·0·1 with the addition of signing.
• Version 1·0·1 — 28^th June 2020
  • Fixed a memory leak.
  • Improved the Metal kernel that draws the ferns, so it will run more efficiently now.
• Version 1·0·0 — 23^rd June 2020
  • Initial public release.