Beautiful Fractals

Screensavers were first designed with the purpose to keep your monitor healthy by running colors on the screen so it doesn’t get damaged. Technology has greatly evolved since then, with screensavers now used for entertainment, or even presentations. For instance, Beautiful Fractals can play a slideshow of high-quality fractals for a mesmerizing visual experience.

With the application installed, there’s the possibility to have a shortcut placed on your desktop for instant trigger, as well as configured as your default screensaver. Mouse movement closes the screensaver by default, but this can be handled from the preferences panel. Note that .NET Framework is required for the program to function.

However, there’s a high chance you don’t find the screensaver anywhere in the Windows Personalize screensaver feature. Luckily, the preferences panel can also be brought from a dedicated context menu entry brought up either on the executable, or shortcut, with the “Configure” tag for easy identification.

Here you get to choose what pictures to show up on screen during the slideshow, as well as general program behavior. The first tab provides options to change the background color, which can be a gradient of two colors in one of four directions. Images can be set to appear in random order, or whether or not to exit on mouse movement.

There’s quite a rich library of preset fractals. These can be explored in the Fractals tab, with the possibility to even search for specific ones, and choose which to include in the slideshow. Sadly, the built-in preview can take quite some time to build up, and there are no options to save, or add any of your own images.

In conclusion, Beautiful Fractals takes you through a psychedelic journey with a rich set of high-quality fractals. However, it feels a little rough around the edges, with a disturbingly high amount of time for the transition effect to finish, and no related adjustment or toggle option.