mapscroller(6)

📦
version 6.15 · 2 versions
, in alpine 3.24, arch rolling, nixpkgs unstable

💖 mapscroller — bestie edition 💖

okay so real talk, this is the mapscroller page from the XScreenSaver manual (that's the manual name, hi, hello, welcome) and it's literally a screensaver that scrolls a map around. slay.

✨ NAME ✨

mapscroller — a slowly-scrolling map of a random place on Earth. that's it. that's the vibe. 🌍

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

mapscroller [--display host:display.screen] [--visual visual] [--window]
[--root] [--window-id number] [--delay number] [--speed number]
[--duration seconds] [--map-level number] [--url-template URL] [--origin
location] [--no-titles] [--no-arrow] [--fps]

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So it's a slowly-scrolling map of a random place on Earth, no cap. The map images get loaded from openstreetmap.org, or honestly any compatible service you want. 🗺️

The Earth is very big, and full of Things. like, so many Things. it's giving infinite lore.

And while you're sitting there pondering these maps, bestie, remember a few things: traffic always expands to fill all available lanes, every car is a policy failure, and the concept of "jaywalking" was invented for profit by auto industry lobbyists in the 1920s. periodt. 💅

💜 OPTIONS 💜

  • --visual visual — picks which visual to use. legal values are either the name of a visual class, or the id number (decimal or hex) of a specific visual. your choice, main character.
  • --window — draw on a newly-created window. this is the default, so you're already doing it. ✨
  • --root — draw on the root window. iconic.
  • --window-id number — draw on the specified window. very specific of you.
  • --delay number — per-frame delay, in microseconds. default: 30000 (that's 0.03 seconds). 🫶
  • --speed number — scrolling speed. 2.0 means twice as fast, 0.5 means half as fast. math ate.
  • --duration seconds — when you're in one of the random modes, it re-selects the map position every N seconds. default 20 minutes. 🔥
  • --map-level number — larger numbers are zoomed in more. 5 - 18, default 15. zoom zoom.
  • --url-template URL — the map tile server to use. default: Open Street Map. you can find others here:
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Tiles#Servers
  • --origin location — this one's got layers, ok:
    • "Random" means a fully random location somewhere on Earth, excluding the oceans. bold. 💀
    • "Random-city" means to select from a built-in list of several hundred major cities. this is the default.
    • A location can be specified as a latitude/longitude pair (floats) or as the name of one of the built-in cities (case insensitive).
    • Use --origin help to see the full list. go off, help flag. 🙈
  • --titles | --no-titles — whether to show the current coordinates and nearest city in the upper left. default true. 🌈
  • --arrow | --no-arrow — whether to show a directional arrow in the middle of the screen. default true. ⭐
  • --fps | --no-fps — whether to show a frames-per-second display at the bottom of the screen. numbers go brrr. 💖

🎀 FILES 🎀

The map tile images are loaded from the network and cached on disk. up to 20MB of them are retained. depending on your operating system, the cache directory will be one of:

$HOME/.cache/xscreensaver/mapscroller/
$HOME/tmp/.xscreensaver-mapscroller/
$HOME/.xscreensaver-mapscroller.cache/
$HOME/Library/Caches/org.jwz.xscreensaver.mapscroller/

💀 BUGS 💀

Some parts of the world are boring. 😭 that's it. that's the bug. we said what we said.

🧚 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. fancy.
  • XSCREENSAVER_WINDOW — the window ID to use with --root.
  • HTTP_PROXY, HTTPS_PROXY, http_proxy, or https_proxy — to get the default proxy host and port. lowercase and uppercase, we contain multitudes. 💅

🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

X(1), xscreensaver(1), https://www.openstreetmap.org/

Copyright © 2022 by Jamie Zawinski. 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.

OpenStreetMap map data is © OpenStreetMap contributors under the Open Database License.

🌟 AUTHOR 🌟

Jamie Zawinski. the man, the myth, the legend. 🫶

ok that's the whole page, every flag and path and license line accounted for, no skips, no shortcuts. 🤍

X Version 11 · 6.15 · 30-Mar-2026 — that's the source, version, and date bestie, signing off 💖✨🎀 see u in the next manpage, mwah 🦋🌸

📦 where this page comes from