Fake macOS Update

What it shows

A black screen with a thin progress bar in the middle and two small lines of gray text under it: "Installing update" and "About 1 hour remaining". The bar starts about a quarter full. Once it is running, it fills slowly, then more and more slowly, and stops well short of the end, while the estimate stays at an hour however long anyone waits. That is the whole joke.

Press Go Fullscreen to fill the screen with it and set it going, or Start to watch it here first. Nothing moves until you do.

Leaving it

Press Esc, click, or tap anywhere, and it closes, exactly as every full-screen tool on this site does. On a phone that cannot go full screen, the picture covers the browser window instead and an Exit button stays in the corner. Nothing here tries to stop anyone leaving: no locked keys, no warning when the tab is closed, and the Back button works as usual.

Keep screen awake starts switched on, because a prank that dims after a minute is not much of a prank. It only asks your browser while the picture is running, lets go when you stop, hide the tab or leave, and the status line says whether your browser agreed.

A picture, not an update

Nothing is installed, downloaded or changed. The computer keeps running normally underneath the picture, and any open work is untouched. The prank screen stores nothing and sends nothing anywhere. It works best on someone who will laugh when they find out.

Not Apple's screen

macOS is a trademark of Apple. ScreenTail is not made by or connected with Apple, and the screen here is a generic one drawn by this page: no logo, none of Apple's fonts, and wording of our own. The name of this page is simply what people search for.