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drift ships eight animations. They cycle automatically or you can lock to one.

waveform — braille sine waves that breathe	constellation — stars drift and connect
rain — katakana characters fall in columns	particles — a flow field of drifting glyphs
pipes — box-drawing pipes snake across the screen and wrap at the edges	maze — a perfect maze builds itself, holds, then dissolves and regenerates
life — Conway's Game of Life; cells flash bright on birth, age through the palette, reset when the grid stagnates	clock — current time in large braille digits, styled in the active theme, with the date below

Nine built-in themes matched to popular terminal colorschemes.

cosmic · nord · dracula · catppuccin · gruvbox · forest · wildberries · mono · rosepine

drift list themes    # preview all themes with color swatches

yay -S drift-bin   # or: paru -S drift-bin

1. Go to the Releases page.

2. Download the archive for your platform:

   OS	Chip	File
   macOS	Apple Silicon (M1/M2/M3)	drift_darwin_arm64.tar.gz
   macOS	Intel	drift_darwin_amd64.tar.gz
   Linux	x86-64	drift_linux_amd64.tar.gz
   Linux	ARM64	drift_linux_arm64.tar.gz
   Windows	x86-64	drift_windows_amd64.zip

3. Extract and move it somewhere on your PATH:

   tar -xzf drift_darwin_arm64.tar.gz
   sudo mv drift /usr/local/bin/
   drift version

go install github.com/phlx0/drift@latest

Make sure Go's bin directory is on your PATH:

# add to ~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc
export PATH="$PATH:$(go env GOPATH)/bin"

git clone https://github.com/phlx0/drift
cd drift
go install .

Requires Go 1.23+. No C compiler or CGO needed.

Shell integration is what makes drift a real screensaver — your shell detects idleness and launches drift automatically. Press any key to return to your prompt.

# add to ~/.zshrc
export DRIFT_TIMEOUT=120   # seconds of inactivity (default: 120)
eval "$(drift shell-init zsh)"

# add to ~/.bashrc
export DRIFT_TIMEOUT=120   # seconds of inactivity (default: 120)
eval "$(drift shell-init bash)"

# add to ~/.config/fish/conf.d/drift.fish
set -x DRIFT_TIMEOUT 120   # seconds of inactivity (default: 120)
drift shell-init fish | source

Shell integration is not available on Windows. Run drift directly from any terminal (Windows Terminal, PowerShell, cmd) to start it immediately, or use drift --showcase to browse interactively. Press esc to exit.

drift                            start immediately (shell integration mode)
drift --scene waveform           lock to a specific scene
drift --theme catppuccin         override the color theme
drift --duration 30              cycle scenes every 30 seconds
drift --showcase                 browse all scenes and themes interactively

drift list scenes                list all available scenes
drift list themes                list themes with color swatches
drift shell-init zsh|bash|fish   print shell integration snippet
drift config                     show effective configuration
drift config --init              write default config to ~/.config/drift/config.toml
drift version                    print version info

drift config --init   # writes ~/.config/drift/config.toml

[engine]
fps              = 30
cycle_seconds    = 60    # 0 = stay on one scene
scenes           = "all"
theme            = "cosmic"
shuffle          = true
hide_tmux_status = false

[scene.constellation]
star_count      = 80
connect_radius  = 0.18
twinkle         = true
max_connections = 4

[scene.rain]
charset = "ｱｲｳｴｵｶｷｸｹｺｻｼｽｾｿﾀﾁﾂﾃﾄﾅﾆﾇﾈﾉ0123456789"
density = 0.4
speed   = 1.0

[scene.particles]
count    = 120
gravity  = 0.0
friction = 0.98

[scene.waveform]
layers    = 3
amplitude = 0.70
speed     = 1.0

[scene.pipes]
heads         = 6
turn_chance   = 0.15
speed         = 1.0
reset_seconds = 45.0

[scene.maze]
pause_seconds = 3.0
fade_seconds  = 2.0
speed         = 1.0

[scene.life]
density       = 0.35
speed         = 1.0
reset_seconds = 30.0

[scene.clock]
show_date = true  # show date below the time

drift --showcase runs drift continuously — nothing exits it except esc. Use it to browse scenes and themes or leave it running on a visible window.

A status bar shows the current scene and theme for 3 seconds after each keypress, then fades out.

Config changes have no effect

Run drift config to check whether your config file is being found:

Config file: /Users/you/.config/drift/config.toml (not found — using defaults; run 'drift config --init' to create it)

If the file is missing, create it with drift config --init. If it exists but changes still don't apply, check for a TOML syntax error — drift config will print the parse error if there is one.

drift doesn't activate automatically

Make sure the shell integration is sourced in your rc file and that DRIFT_TIMEOUT (or TMOUT in zsh) is set:

export DRIFT_TIMEOUT=120
eval "$(drift shell-init zsh)"   # or bash / fish

Then open a new terminal session for it to take effect.

New scenes and themes are very welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md for the development guide.