Apple TV · Native App

Phosphoria

A kaleidoscope for your TV

Forty-two drawing algorithms take turns on a mirrored canvas, making stars, spirals, arches, ribbons, lattices and fountains, with three to nine of them layered on one screen. The picture holds for a moment, one of twenty-four fades clears it away, a new palette is mixed, and it starts again. Every line and every fade is drawn live, so it never repeats.

Coming soon to the
App Store Get support →

$Phosphoria on an Apple TV: cyan, magenta and yellow bars, glowing discs and fractal curls layered on black$

Apple TV · One finished Auto screen

A monochrome Phosphoria screen of radiating fans and nested frames, white on black

A monochrome palette, mixed on the spot

Orange six-pointed stars and fine radiating line-work on black

Every screen gets its own 256-colour palette

Violet and orange lattices crossing over a white ground, with fine moiré patterning

Backgrounds aren't always black

A single eight-pointed star drawn in green, blue and magenta on black

Semi-Auto: one algorithm, drawn by hand

Drawn live, one mark at a time

Forty-two images, twenty-four fades, no repeats

42

Forty-two image algorithms

Stars, spirals, arches, ribbons, lattices, fountains and tessellations, each one named and each one switchable

24

Twenty-four fades

Some dissolve the picture, some slide it off the edge, some scramble it into confetti, some drip it down the screen

AUTO

Auto mode

It layers, holds, fades, mixes a new palette and starts over, for as long as you leave it running, never the same way twice

SEMI

Semi-Auto mode

Pick an image, draw it for as long as you hold the button, mix images freely, then fire the fade you want

VGA

256-colour palettes

VGA-style palettes made fresh for every screen and cycled continuously, which is why a still picture keeps moving

4:3

Classic or Expanded

The original 4:3 canvas, or a wider 16:9 one that's extended rather than stretched

4K

Classic, HD or 4K

At HD and 4K every curve is drawn at your TV's own resolution and keeps its original one-pixel line weight

PACE

Unhurried on purpose

The algorithms were written for a 386, and they still draw at that speed, slow enough to watch each shape take form

SET

Simple until you want more

Start with layout and resolution. Advanced settings adds per-image size, which fades can run, images per screen, pause time and both speeds

●

No data, no network

Nothing ever leaves your Apple TV

Compatibility

For Apple TV HD and Apple TV 4K running tvOS 18 or later. Everything is done with the Siri Remote. Play/Pause switches between Auto and Semi-Auto, Menu opens the configuration screen, swiping up moves to the next picture and down holds the current one, and left and right slow down or speed up the colour cycling. If you have a Bluetooth keyboard, it gets the original key layout, one for one.On an Apple TV 4K the app draws to a real 3840×2160 surface, so 4K is native, not supersampled, and the app picks it on first launch if your TV supports it. Apple TV HD stays at HD.

The picture

Choose Classic 4:3, the original 320×400 canvas with black bars at the sides, or Expanded 16:9, where the canvas really is wider instead of stretched, so mirrors stay centred and circles stay round. Resolution can be Classic, HD or 4K. Classic keeps the chunky VGA blocks, and Crisp pixels draw them with no blending at all. At 4K in 4:3, that gives you exactly the original's pixel shape.Smooth is the default. It keeps the blocks hard-edged without shimmering as they move. Whole gives perfectly even blocks at the cost of black borders. At 4K on an Apple TV 4K each drawn pixel is already a screen pixel, so all three look the same.

Origins

Inspired by a 1990 shareware screensaver for MS-DOS by James R. Shiflett. Phosphoria is an independent version written from watching how that program behaves. It shares no code or assets with it and is not affiliated with or endorsed by its author.

Privacy

Nothing leaves your Apple TV

Phosphoria doesn't collect, send or share any data. There's no account, no sign-in, no networking code at all and no analytics, advertising or tracking. Your settings (layout, resolution, which images and fades are on, and the speeds) are stored only on your Apple TV, and deleting the app deletes them. Its App Store privacy label is "Data Not Collected." Read the full privacy policy.