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Remember the days when it seemed like every office computer on the planet endlessly played

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those mystify your mind or 3D pipes screensavers when the workday was over?

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Oh, that's good times. But today, you barely see anyone using a screensaver anymore.

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I mean, you even have to work a little bit to find the setting to enable it in Windows

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11. So, why were they so common back in the day?

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Well, the reason they were called screensavers is that they literally helped save your monitor

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from an early death. It's rough out there for monitors.

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Those bulky monitors that everyone used to use called CRTs worked by blasting electrons

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at the inside of the screen, which was coated with chemicals called phosphors.

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When electrons hit the phosphors, they'd light up, producing an image.

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But this process also wore down the phosphors over time.

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So if you had the screen showing the same thing for long periods of time, such as text

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or logos, the phosphors in those areas would wear down more quickly, creating a problem

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called burn-in, where you'd see the ghost of those screen elements permanently, ooh.

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Older CRTs that mostly just displayed text were more susceptible to this than what we

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used in the days of, say, Windows 98. But all CRTs have the potential to suffer from burn-in, making the screensaver popular

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well into the 2000s. By showing a continually moving image, screensavers prevented phosphors in one area from wearing

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down. It didn't hurt their popularity that they also looked, uh, pretty cool.

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And even though you could just turn the monitor off instead, screensavers provided a good

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solution for folks who frequently had to walk away from their systems, or who didn't want

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to wait for their monitor to warm back up after it had been powered off.

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Once LCD displays started coming down in price, they quickly displaced the older CRTs and

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with them, the need for a screensaver. LCDs work completely differently than CRTs.

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They don't have phosphors. And while the liquid crystals can get temporarily stuck in one orientation, if you leave the

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same image on the screen for a long time, this effect usually isn't permanent like

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it was on CRTs. So you simply don't need a screensaver on most modern flat panels, except in extreme

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cases. So why are screensavers still around then? Do they even serve a purpose anymore?

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So besides looking cool, screensavers are still kind of useful as a screen lock.

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You can apply a screensaver and set it to return your computer to the login screen once

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someone moves the mouse or presses a key so that your system won't just be completely

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unsecured if you step away and forget to lock it manually. But you can also set your PC to lock after a certain period of inactivity without involving

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a screensaver at all. So are they anything more than purely decorative?

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It turns out that the answer is actually yes, particularly for OLED screens.

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The organic LEDs that make up the picture in OLED displays degrade unevenly over time

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if you're displaying a static image on one area, leaving them more susceptible to burn

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in than other flat panels. It's therefore quite common for OLED displays to have burn-in mitigation features with screensavers

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being one of them. If you've used an LG OLED TV, you've probably seen how a fireworks-like screensaver appears

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after a short period of inactivity, and these TVs also move the image very slightly ever

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so often, which prevents burn-in through the same principle as a screensaver, although

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with less fun pipes. And it's not at all a bad idea to set a screensaver if you have an OLED monitor for your PC, which

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are a little more common now than they used to be. Some screensavers are even interactive, like this one that allows you to play old-school

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NES games on the screensaver, but at that point, is it really a screensaver or are

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you just playing a game on your computer?

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Let me know. And I'd like to let you know that I'm very thankful to you, and there's comments below

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you can talk about. Don't forget to subscribe and follow.