Application as screensaver

AyaanMAG · April 18, 2023

Its called btop++ rather btop4win on windows and i want it as a screensaver to trigger after 15 mins of inactivity and also lock the screen while at it like windows screensaver does.

GoodBytes · April 18, 2023

7 hours ago, AyaanMAG said:

Its called btop++ rather btop4win on windows and i want it as a screensaver to trigger after 15 mins of inactivity and also lock the screen while at it like windows screensaver does.

Screensavers are a special executable format .scr

All you can do is create a Task Scheduler. You can create a task in there and see if it works the way you want it.

The best you can do (without making your own program), is to check if the system is idle. Multiple variables determines when a system is idle, mouse, keyboard, and system load. And your program, depending on your system load it needs. It could also never trigger if your system has a CPU load. This is the limitation of Task Scheduler, as it wasn't designed a screensaver replacement.

Now technically speaking, a SCR is nothing more than an executable file. So, you can try and rename the executable as .scr, place it in system32 folder, and see what you get. Preview will definitely fail, as it does calls to the executable, and expect a certain result, which obviously your program won't be able to support as it wasn't ever designed to be a screensaver.

AyaanMAG · April 25, 2023

On 4/19/2023 at 3:42 AM, GoodBytes said:

Screensavers are a special executable format .scr

All you can do is create a Task Scheduler. You can create a task in there and see if it works the way you want it.

The best you can do (without making your own program), is to check if the system is idle. Multiple variables determines when a system is idle, mouse, keyboard, and system load. And your program, depending on your system load it needs. It could also never trigger if your system has a CPU load. This is the limitation of Task Scheduler, as it wasn't designed a screensaver replacement.

Now technically speaking, a SCR is nothing more than an executable file. So, you can try and rename the executable as .scr, place it in system32 folder, and see what you get. Preview will definitely fail, as it does calls to the executable, and expect a certain result, which obviously your program won't be able to support as it wasn't ever designed to be a screensaver.

I tried the renaming to .scr thing and it didn't seem to work. Thank you for the information, tho, I shall try making this when I learn to program. Thank you.