cityflow(6x)

📦
version 6.17 · 10 versions
, in fedora 44

💖 cityflow — bestie edition 💖

ok so you found the cityflow(6x) page in the XScreenSaver manual and honestly? you're about to have the cutest little existential crisis of your life. sit down, grab a strawberry 🍓, and let me tell you about the waves of boxes.

✨ NAME ✨

cityflow — waves of boxes. that's it. that's the whole vibe. 🎀

🌊 SYNOPSIS 🌊

cityflow [--display host:display.screen] [--visual visual] [--window]
[--root] [--window-id number] [--delay number] [--count number] [--wave-
speed number] [--wave-radius number] [--waves number] [--skew number]
[--wireframe] [--fps]

like, all of this at once, or literally none of it. she's flexible 💅

👑 DESCRIPTION 👑

Okay so picture this: waves move across a sea of boxes. 🌊📦

The city swells. The walls are closing in.

and that's... genuinely it, that's the whole screenshotter. it's giving liminal space. it's giving "i am a small creature and the architecture is alive." iconic, honestly, no notes. 🦋

🌸 OPTIONS 🌸

  • --visual visual — picks which visual you're using. legal values? either the name of a visual class, or the id number of one specific visual — and yes that id can be decimal or hex, we don't discriminate here 💜
  • --window — draw on a brand-new window that gets created just for this. this is the default, so if you say nothing, this is what you get ✨
  • --root — draw directly on the root window. main character energy, no extra window, just vibes on the desktop 🫶
  • --window-id number — draw on the specific window you point at. you pick it, she decorates it.
  • --delay number — per-frame delay, measured in microseconds. Default: 20000 — which is literally 0.02 seconds for my people who don't think in microseconds 😭
  • --count number — how many boxes. range is 50 – 4000. Default: 800. that's a lot of little guys 🌈
  • --wave-speed number — how fast the waves go. range 5 – 150. Default: 25.
  • --wave-radius number — wave overlap. range 5 – 512. Default: 256.
  • --waves number — wave complexity, aka how extra the waves are being. range 1 – 20. Default: 6.
  • --skew number — the skew. range 0 – 45. Default: 12. slanted, bestie, deliberately 🎀
  • --wireframe | --no-wireframe — render in wireframe instead of solid. skeleton mode vs. full-girl mode 💀✨
  • --fps | --no-fps — whether to show a frames-per-second display at the bottom of the screen. yes she'll tell you how hard she's working 🫶

🧚 ENVIRONMENT 🧚

  • DISPLAY — used to get the default host and display number. the classic.
  • XENVIRONMENT — used to get the name of a resource file that overrides the global resources stored in the RESOURCE_MANAGER property. it's the "actually, no" of resource files 💅
  • XSCREENSAVER_WINDOW — the window ID to use with --root. hang onto that one.

🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

X(1), xscreensaver(1) — go read those too, iykyk 📚

Copyright © 2012 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.

okay so tl;dr of the legal bit: go wild, sell it, remix it, just keep the copyright notice and this permission notice in there — and no promises that it'll work for anything, it's handed over "as is", no express or implied warranty. periodt. 📜

⭐ AUTHOR ⭐

Jamie Zawinski. legend behavior, fr fr 👑

ok bestie, that's the page 💖 she's from X Version 11, this particular one is 6.17-1.fc44 dated 13-Oct-2026, and honestly? cityflow ate. go make your boxes wave. 🌊📦✨

📦 where this page comes from