Ambient Digital Rain for macOS
v2.0 · macOS 14 Sonoma or later · Free forever
What's New
A full settings redesign, system font picker, smoother multi-monitor performance, and a changelog.
Settings panel rebuilt with a macOS-style source list sidebar. General, Message, Clock, Import/Export, and About are now sidebar items — cleaner, more at home on macOS.
The clock font picker now opens the standard macOS font panel, giving you access to every font installed on your Mac — not just a fixed list of 13.
All displays are now driven by a single shared CVDisplayLink instead of one per screen. Tighter frame pacing and less CPU overhead on multi-monitor setups.
Every version of Cyph3rfall is now documented at cyph3rfall.app/changelog.html.
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.
Slowly drift the entire rain through every colour preset in hue order — red, orange, amber, green, cyan, blue, amethyst, pink — blending smoothly between each. Three speeds. Starts from your current colour. Clock and message follow along.
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 any font installed on your Mac, subtly rendered over the rain. Font size varies slightly each minute to prevent screen burn without ever drifting off-centre.
Require Touch ID, Face ID, or Apple Watch authentication to dismiss. Lock arms automatically once your idle threshold is met. This is a casual privacy lock — it keeps curious eyes out, not a determined attacker. Designed for awareness, not enforcement.
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. When one is available, click the banner in the menu to download, install, and relaunch in one step — no browser or Finder required.
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-v2.0.dmg from the
Releases page.
Requirements
Tested on