Apple TV · Native App

Phosphoria

A kaleidoscope for your TV

Forty-two drawing algorithms take turns on a mirrored canvas — stars, spirals, arches, ribbons, lattices, fountains — three to nine of them layered on one screen. The picture holds for a moment, one of twenty-four fades takes it apart, a fresh palette is mixed, and it begins again. Nothing here is a video loop: every line and every fade is drawn live, and it never repeats.

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

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 are not 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, tessellations — all named, all separately 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 runs itself — layer, hold, fade, mix a new palette, begin again — indefinitely, and 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 genuinely wider 16:9 one — widened, never stretched

4K

Classic, HD or 4K

At HD and 4K every curve is rasterised at your television's own resolution, keeping its original one-pixel weight

PACE

The pace is the point

These algorithms were written for a 386, and it draws at the same measured speed — slowly enough to watch a shape take form

SET

Simple, until you want more

Layout and resolution to begin with; Advanced settings opens per-image size, which fades may 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. Controlled entirely with the Siri Remote — Play/Pause switches between Auto and Semi-Auto, Menu opens the configuration screen, swipe up for the next picture, down to hold the current one, left and right to slow or speed the colour cycling. A Bluetooth keyboard, if you have one, gets the original key layout one for one.An Apple TV 4K gives the app a real 3840×2160 drawable, so 4K is native rather than supersampled, and the app selects it on first launch when the television offers it. Apple TV HD stays on HD.

The picture

Choose Classic 4:3 — the original 320×400 canvas, pillarboxed — or Expanded 16:9, where the canvas is genuinely wider rather than stretched, so mirrors stay centred and circles stay round. Resolution is 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, exactly the original's pixel shape.Smooth is the default and keeps the blocks hard-edged without shimmering as they move; Whole trades black borders for perfectly even blocks. At 4K on an Apple TV 4K a drawn pixel already is a screen pixel, and all three look the same.

Origins

Inspired by a 1990 shareware screensaver for MS-DOS by James R. Shiflett. Phosphoria is an independent reimplementation written from observed behaviour; it shares no code or assets with that program and is not affiliated with or endorsed by its author.

Privacy

Nothing leaves your Apple TV

Phosphoria does not collect, transmit, or share any data. There is no account, no sign-in, no networking code of any kind, and no analytics, advertising or tracking. Your settings — layout, resolution, which images and fades are enabled, 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.