Fireplace Screensaver

What it does

A fire burns in a dark hearth: layered tongues of red, orange and yellow flame over two logs, leaning and rising, with a few embers drifting up. Press Start, or Go Fullscreen to fill the screen or a television. Until you do, it is a still picture of the same fire.

A fire that does not flicker the room

A real fire flickers many times a second, and on a screen that is a flicker filling part of the room with changing light — something this site does not show. So this fire is built differently. The movement is in the shapes of the flames, not in their brightness. The tongues rise and fall on the same slow rhythm but out of step with one another, so as one grows another shrinks and the total amount of flame stays the same. Nothing in it changes faster than about once a second, the warm glow around it is fixed, and the embers fade in and out gently.

The result is calmer than a real fire, and that is deliberate.

What it is not

It is a picture. It gives no heat, it is not a substitute for a fire, and there is no reason to leave a screen running all night in place of one. It is also silent; for the sound of a fire, open Campfire Sounds in another tab. Every flame and ember is drawn by your browser as you watch, so there is no video to download and no loop to spot.

Leaving it running

Keep screen awake is off until you switch it on. If you do, it is held only while the fire is moving, released when you press Stop, hide the tab or leave, and the status line says whether your browser agreed. A screen left on uses power; switch it off when the room is empty, and for a screen you simply want dark, use the Black Screen.