bubblecolors(6)

📦 version 6.15, in alpine 3.24, arch rolling, nixpkgs unstable

✨ bubblecolors — bestie's guide to the bubble screensaver ✨

okay so real talk, this is a page from the XScreenSaver manual, section 6 — the games/screensavers corner of the manual-verse 🫶 — and it's about bubblecolors, which is genuinely one of the cutest things you can put on your screen. let's get into it 💅

🌈 NAME 🌈

bubblecolors — screen saver. that's it, that's the whole name, no notes ✨

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

bubblecolors [--display host:display.screen] [--visual visual]
[--window] [--root] [--delay number] [--speed number] [--scale number]
[--fps]

like, that's the whole vibe. you run it, it does bubbles 💖

💫 DESCRIPTION 💫

okay so picture this: you're traveling through a field of bubbles — yes, an actual field of them — and they're all in cartoony colors. that's the entire aesthetic. it's giving Saturday morning cartoon meets screensaver and honestly? iconic 👑

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

  • --visual visual — tells it which visual to use. legal values are either the name of a visual class, or the id number (and yes, decimal or hex, we don't discriminate) of a specific visual 🌸
  • --window — draws on a newly-created window. and btw this is the default, so if you're not specifying anything, congrats, you're already doing this 🫶
  • --root — draws on the root window instead. main character energy, covering your whole desktop 💅
  • --delay number — per-frame delay, measured in microseconds. default: 20000 (which is 0.02 seconds, for anyone who doesn't feel like doing the math 😭)
  • --speed number — animation speed. 2.0 means twice as fast, 0.5 means half as fast. slay, choose your own adventure 🔥
  • --scale number — resolution. anything from 0.1 to 1.0. default: 1.0. so like, tiny bubbles to full-size bubbles, your call 🍓
  • --fps | --no-fps — whether to show a frames-per-second display at the bottom of the screen. yes or no, on or off, the choice is yours ✨

🧚 ENVIRONMENT 🧚

  • DISPLAY — to get the default host and display number. you know, the classic ✨
  • XENVIRONMENT — to get the name of a resource file that overrides the global resources stored in the RESOURCE_MANAGER property. deep lore, iykyk 💜
  • XSCREENSAVER_WINDOW — the window ID to use with --root. ngl this one's important, don't lose track of it 💀

👑 SEE ALSO 👑

X(1), xscreensaver(1), https://www.shadertoy.com/view/wcGXWR

(that last one is a shadertoy link, go look at it, it's where the whole bubble situation came from 🌈)

Copyright © 2025 by Matt Vianueva.

okay so here's the legal bit, bestie, and it's lowkey generous: Permission to use, copy, modify, distribute, and sell this software and its documentation for any purpose is hereby granted without fee, provided that the above copyright notice appear in all copies and that both that copyright notice and this permission notice appear in supporting documentation.

⚠️ and here's the part you do not skip: No representations are made about the suitability of this software for any purpose. It is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty. so like, no promises, no guarantees, ship it at your own risk 🙈

🎀 AUTHOR 🎀

Matt Vianueva <diatribes@gmail.com> — thank you for the bubbles, king 🫡

that's the whole page! this gorgeous thing shipped as X Version 11, version 6.15, dated 30-Mar-2026 — go forth and enjoy the cartoony bubbles, bestie 💅💖✨

📦 where this page comes from