Use iTunes visualizers as screensavers

Music visualization was pretty big in the late 90s, and you couldn’t really open up Windows Media Player or Winamp without seeing G-Force or Advanced Visualization Studio (AVS). Nowadays, apps still offer visualizers but it just seems much cooler to show off your album art in something like Cover Flow. If you’re feeling nostalgic though and are looking to bring music visualizers back into fashion you can start off in iTunes. This little tip found on macosxhints, allows you to use your iTunes visualizers as screensavers on your Mac. Here’s how to do it:

After downloading a new visualizer, copy it and put it in ~/Library/Screen Savers. Open it up in Quartz Composer (you’ll need to have Developer Tools to do this). In the Editor window, choose Editor> Edit Protocol Conformance. In the new screen that pops up, check off Screen Saver option and save the file. Now your iTunes visualizer will be your default screensaver, even if iTunes is off.

Now that you’ve managed to pull this off I can suggest a few visualizers that made it on Softonic, because they’re the best you can get for Mac. Eyephedrine is an Open GL 3D visualizer with more than 75 effects. It also handles cover art and pictures. ArKaos Visualzer matches to the beats and bass of your tracks for some pretty smooth effects. My favorite has probably got to be GasLight though, as it lets you really customize your visualizer, adjusting movement, color and shapes. Finally, make sure to grab Ultragroovalicious, another OpenGL 3D visualizer with some funky effects.