30 Mac Screensavers to Inspire & Inform

There are countless screensavers available for showing beautiful photographs and funky swirling graphics – we’ve even rounded up a selection previously. But what if you’d like your monitor to show something more useful?

Today we’re looking at 30 different screensavers that will inspire and inform you. Whether that’s keeping you up-to-date with news, showing information about incoming messages, recent tweets, or even helping you learn a new language!

ToDo List

This screensaver has all the features of a task list, in addition to displaying your tasks on your monitor. You can access your to-do list like any other application in order to update it. The full version of this screensaver is available for $9.95.

SaveHollywood

Play a QuickTime Movie as your screensaver. If you’d rather run videos in succession, you can select an entire directory.

Status Screen Saver

One of the problems with screensavers is that if you’re expecting an email, you have to keep waking up your computer. With this screensaver, you can display the statuses of several different programs, such as email or instant messengers.

Dashsaver

View your dashboard in your screensaver, displaying the weather or any RSS feeds you may want to get a quick look at.

Transparent

Sometimes it’s important to use a screensaver that allows you to still see what’s actually happening on your desktop. This screensaver does just that. The full version is $15.

MoodSaver

You can tell just how hard your computer is working by the brightness and movement of the colors in this screensaver.

ShuffleSaver

Watch photos from Flickr cross your screen. You can even mark photos as favorite or skip pictures using hot keys.

BigSpy

Display the latest activity on Digg as your screensaver. You’ll see new headlines, and as they get more diggs, they’ll get bigger.

Stack

With this screensaver, you can see a visualization of the number of votes new headlines are receiving on Digg.

Swarm

Another visualization of Digg votes, this screensaver shows the progression of how specific Digg users are voting up different stories.

TweetSavr

Show the tweets of any particular user as your screensaver.

Twistori

A colorful display of Twitter posts, this screensaver displays posts that include specific verbs, such as ‘love’ or ‘hate.’

Twistori

LibraryThing

For LibraryThing users, you can display the covers of the books in your collection as your screensaver.

Sprint, This is Now

This screensaver developed by Sprint allows you to pull in all of your social media presence and see updates to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and more while your screensaver is active.

Word Clock

This screensaver shows a creative clock while running, by highlighting the words that make up the current time.

Dropclock

Watch the numbers that make up the current time slowly drop into water for a clock with an unusual effect.

Polar Clock

The time progresses on this screensaver, with each part of the exact time — from seconds to month — circling around the center of the screen, changing colors in the process.