jigglypuff(6)

💅 jigglypuff(6) — like, the XScreenSaver manual, but make it cute ✨

okay bestie, so this is jigglypuff from the XScreenSaver manual, and no cap it's the silliest little program ever. it saves your screen by tormenting your eyes 🫶

🌸 NAME 🌸

jigglypuff — save your screen by tormenting your eyes.

like. that's genuinely the whole pitch. iconic.

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

jigglypuff [--display host:display.screen] [--visual visual] [--window]
[--root] [--window-id number] [-delay number] [-cycles number]
[-wireframe] [-fps] [-color colorspec] [-spooky] [-complexity n] [-speed
n] [-spherism n] [-hold n] [-distance n] [-damping n]

that's a lot of flags, i know. breathe. we'll get to all of them, fr fr 💖

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so what does it do? it draws all manners of obscene, spastic, puffy, vaguely ball-shaped objects orbiting lazily about the screen, with a dizzying array of mostly pointless options.

yep. puffy little ball things. lazily orbiting. mostly pointless options. the way that description ate 😭 it's literally the whole vibe of this manpage.

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🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

• --visual visual — specify which visual to use. legal values are the name of a visual class, or the id number (decimal or hex) of a specific visual.
• --window — draw on a newly-created window. this is the default, so if you do nothing, congrats, you're already doing it 💅
• --root — draw on the root window. main character energy, on your whole desktop.
• --window-id number — draw on the specified window. yes, that one. the one you chose.
• --delay number — per-frame delay, in microseconds. default: 20000 (that's 0.02 seconds, bestie).
• --wireframe — render in wireframe instead of solid. default: render solid. lowkey a whole different aesthetic.
• --fps — display the current frame rate, CPU load, and polygon count. numbers!! we love numbers!! ⭐
• -tetra | -no-tetra — whether to start the shape in the form of a tetrahedron. the default is to start as a sphere.
• -color colorspec — available options for colorspec are: cycle, flowerbox, clownpuke, chrome and #xxxxxx (i.e an (old-style) X color specification.) default: cycle. i need everyone to appreciate clownpuke as an option name 🙈
• -spooky n — this option controls a kind of interesting effect obtained by using unnormalized normal vectors (how's that for an oxymoron?) in OpenGL. a value of zero disables the effect. other values vary the lengths of the normals proportionally. okay, so it's not very spooky. sue me. default: 0.
• -complexity n — valid options are 1, 2, and 3. everything else is treated as though it were 2, which is the default. this controls the number of polygons in the 'thing'. a value of 1 yields 1024, and the values go up in powers of 4. (i.e. 4096, 16384.)

note: there is an inherent lack of stability at lower complexity, which can cause the shape to devolve into a 'flying snotrag'. 😭 not me warning you about the flying snotrag. this is real. this is documented. i'm just the messenger.

• -speed n — controls how fast the blob moves around the screen. default: 500.
• -spherism, -hold, -distance, -damping — these options control the 'jigglyness'. 🍓 the best way to explain these is to explain how jigglypuff works.

basically, the shape is a tetrahedron whose faces are subdivided into a number of triangles, forming a mesh. each of the vertices of the mesh has two different forces applied to it: one proportional to its distance from the surface of a sphere, and one proportional to the difference of the distance to each of its neighbors in the mesh to a given ideal distance. in short, one tries to move the points into the configuration of a sphere, and the other tries to push them back into a tetrahedron. the catch is that the points have inertia, so they always overshoot their target, and hence they oscillate.

the magnitudes of the two forces is controlled by the options spherism and hold; distance specifies the distance the vertices seek to keep from their neighbors, with 500 corresponding to the size of the start tetrahedron. e.g. if you were to give the options -tetra -spherism 0 -distance 500, you would end up with a stable tetrahedron.

the damping option can help to keep the blob from collapsing or flying apart. the option specifies the speed at which damping starts, hence lower values mean more damping.

defaults: spherism: 75; hold: 800; distance: 100; damping: 500.

(physics!! in your screensaver!! she's cute AND she's got a whole spring-mass simulation going on, iykyk 💜)

• -random — probably the only parameter you'l ever need. overrides almost all of the parameters with random values. the values affected are: speed, spherism, hold, distance, damping, spooky, color, wireframe and tetra. default: off.

(that apostrophe in "you'l" is in the original, bestie — i'm not fixing it, i'm respecting it. periodt.)

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🌈 ENVIRONMENT 🌈

• DISPLAY — to get the default host and display number.
• XENVIRONMENT — to get the name of a resource file that overrides the global resources stored in the RESOURCE_MANAGER property.
• XSCREENSAVER_WINDOW — the window ID to use with --root.

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👑 SEE ALSO 👑

X(1), xscreensaver(1)

go read those too. slay.

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🔥 COPYRIGHT 🔥

Copyright © 2003 by Keith Macleod. 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. no representations are made about the suitability of this software for any purpose. it is provided "as is" without express or implied warranty.

(translation: it's free, just keep the notice, and if it breaks, that's on you, not Keith. 💀)

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🧚 AUTHOR 🧚

by Keith Macleod

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that's the whole thing, bestie!! you are now fully jigglypuff-literate 💖 thanks for reading to the end, you're a real one 🫶

x version 11 · 6.15 (30-Mar-2026) · jigglypuff(6) · go orbit something 🌸