xscreensaver-text(6)

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

💅 xscreensaver-text — like, the whole manual, bestie

okay so this is xscreensaver-text(6), straight out of the XScreenSaver manual, and it's genuinely one of the most underrated little tools ever. it prints text. that's it. that's the gig. but the way it does it?? iconic. let's get into it 🫶

✨ NAME ✨

xscreensaver-text — it prints some text to stdout, for use by screen savers. literally just vibes in text form, no cap.

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

xscreensaver-text [--verbose] [--columns N] [--lines N] [--latin1]
[--date] [--text STRING] [--file PATH] [--program CMD] [--url URL]

copy that exactly, bestie, don't be creative with it 💀

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so the xscreensaver-text script prints out some text for use by various screensavers — and which text it prints depends on the options you've set in your ~/.xscreensaver file. it's giving "personal assistant who reads your config file and then does exactly what you asked."

depending on what you tell it, it may dump the contents of a file, run a program, or load a URL. and then — this is the part that ate — the text gets reformatted and wrapped as appropriate, so it looks cute in whatever screensaver is consuming it. no ragged edges, no weird overflow. we love a self-aware little script 🎀

💅 OPTIONS 💅

xscreensaver-text accepts the following options:

  • --verbose or --v — prints diagnostics to stderr. and like, if you stack multiple -v switches, the amount of output goes up. more -v, more lore 🔍.
  • --columns N or --cols N — tells it where to wrap lines. default is 72 columns. the classic. the standard. the moment.
  • --lines N — truncates the output to at most this many lines. default: unlimited, so go off i guess 😭.
  • --latin1 — converts any UTF-8 characters in the input to their closest Latin1 equivalent for output. like a lil translator for your legacy encodings, slay.

so basically — command line options may be used to override the settings in the ~/.xscreensaver file. your config says one thing, your flag says another, the flag wins. periodt 👑

  • --date — prints the host name and current time. simple, effective, timestamped 🕐.
  • --text STRING — prints out the given text. and here's the fun part: it may contain % escape sequences as per strftime(2). so you can do time-y stuff inside your string. iykyk.
  • --file PATH — prints the contents of the given file, re-formatting it as per the other options. feed it a file, get back a nicely wrapped file 💖.
  • --program CMD — runs the given program and prints its output, re-formatting it as per the other options. like a little middleman between you and your shell 🌈.
  • --url URL — downloads and prints the contents of the web page. and if that page contains HTML, RSS, or Atom, it gets converted to plain-text. yes bestie, it does the conversion for you. this re-downloads the document every time it is run — every single time, no caching, we'll get to that 🙈.

💜 ENVIRONMENT 💜

  • HTTP_PROXY, HTTPS_PROXY, http_proxy, or https_proxy — these bad boys are used to get the default proxy host and port. all four spellings, so whichever one your setup uses, it's covered 🧚.

💀 BUGS 💀

URLs should be cached, should use "If-Modified-Since", and should obey "Expires".

that's the whole bug note. it's short and it's honest. the url fetching is out here re-downloading everything like it's got unlimited data and no regrets 😭

⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

xscreensaver-settings(1), xscreensaver(1), fortune(1), phosphor(6), apple2(6), starwars(6), fontglide(6), dadadodo(1), webcollage(6)

go read them, they're all part of the same iconic little ecosystem 🌸

Copyright © 2005-2021 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.

(translation: go forth and use it, just keep the notice, and don't come for anybody if it breaks 💅)

🎀 AUTHOR 🎀

Jamie Zawinski <jwz@jwz.org>, 20-Mar-2005. the main character of this whole manual, honestly.

and that's the whole thing bestie — this page came out of X Version 11, version 6.15 (30-Mar-2026), and honestly? a serve. now go wrap some text, you've got this 💖✨

📦 where this page comes from