The last few years haven’t had a lot of new items in this space. The fact that MacLampsX from 2002 was still one of the best programs shows that! This year there is a new entry from Festivitas! It costs a cheap four euros (about $4.25 as of this writing) and puts lamps on the top of your screen and on the dock with lots of options. True MacLampsX is still free, and does still work, but it requires you to bypass the MacOS built in safeguards as it’s not signed by Apple (This costs $99 a year, so I imagine the writer didn’t want to spend it on something that was a side project many years ago.) So let’s get right to the list!
Festivitas
Festivitas is written by Simon Støvring and he is rapidly improving it over the last few weeks. You can view details of the program and purchase is here: Festivitas Christmas lights . It looks great with iSnow and has a modern gradient look to the bulbs, there are many options for blinking patterns, and even all white (and you can choose the color temperature). Here is a screen shot of it with iSnow and the options pane:
MacLampsX
I’ve used this for probably over 20 years, it still has the “X” suffix to indicate that it’s a program for Mac OS X vs classic! I contacted the author a few years ago and he updated to program to work on 64 bit macs, although as of this writing it’s still compiled for Intel macs, I confirmed it works fine under Rosetta 2 on my M1 Mac Mini. You have a lot of options on how to decorate your screen. Various bulbs, holy, and you can even download extra options from his site (or make your own if you’re adventurous) MacLampsX has been my favorite for 2 decades because it does what’s on the tin, and does it well. You can download the current version from Ben Kurtz’s website here: https://benkurtz.org/maclampsx.html . I would go ahead and spend the few bucks on Festivitas, but if you like a little more retro look, go ahead with MacLampsX
iSnow
ISnow is another one from over 20 years ago they also use the “i” naming convention to set it apart from the old Mac Classic OS(which it existed on). This program makes your desktop snow (which MacLampsX also does now). The advantage of iSnow is the snow accumulates on the top of your windows. It also has more options than an old school nerd like me can fathom. It now can use you location to show the Sun, Moon and do other fun things. It’s not free, but an eye watering 99 cents. That’s right, the author charges less than a buck, less than a small fry at McDonald’s, a coffee at Starbucks, etc for this program which will fill your screen with holiday joy. As you probably know it costs US$100 to be a developer, so this 0.99 that they charge isn’t making them rich! There seems to be a small bug in macOS13 where the snow gathers slightly higher than the window. I’m sure the author is on it and it’s probably fixed by the time you read this! (UPDATE: Fixed now (tested Dec 3rd, 2024 on MacOS Sequoia) )
Bash Shell (not just mac, any Linux or WSL that runs bash)
If you want to decorate your terminal, the old BASH Christmas tree is still a good option, you can download it here: https://github.com/sergiolepore/ChristBASHTree
or run it directly by running this in a terminal window:
wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sergiolepore/ChristBASHTree/master/tree-EN.sh | bash
Live Background
Live backgrounds seem to have a haydey in the ~2005 time frame with mac-quarium copy cats abounding. There is still a good Christmas live background. It also costs a trivial 99 cents on the Mac App store. It has an assortment of options, some more religious and some more secular as you like. You can purchase it on the app store here: Mac Christmas Live Wallpaper . It has some Christmas music if you like, although I found it repetitive quickly. I also couldn’t figure out how to get it on my second monitor. But it has a few nice options, you can change the animated characters to your choice, and again 99 cents means the developer is just trying to recoup their cost to publish, not making any real money.
What about you? Do you use any apps to make your desktop a little more festive? Please leave a comment below. Due to massive spam all comments have to be approved, but I’ll be approving every day thru Christmas 2022 and I honestly hope to find new decorations for our mac desktops!