Before Dawn is an open-source, cross-platform screensaver program that uses web-based technology. You can use HTML/CSS, javascript, linen, and any resources on which these technologies depend to create screensavers. In principle, it's as easy as writing an HTML page. The project is a personal project by muffinista aimed at discovering the history of early screensavers. It was determined that a system would work best to actually run a screensaver on a desktop computer.

What is Before Dawn screensaver?

Before Dawn is a desktop screensaver program that is easy for artists and developers to use. It is certainly an ambitious experiment; you need to run it separately and uninstall any screensaver you have running on your device to use it. It's fun and it certainly works. The core of Before Dawn is built on Electron—a framework to create desktop apps running on node.js.

The preferences window will open when you first launch the program. There you can preview and select screensavers. There is a segment called 'Advanced Configuration' where you can specify some options to run the program. You can conveniently install this tool on your computer, but you should download an installer first. You can choose between the Mac OS X and Windows binaries. Ubuntu/Debian also released an experimental version that you can use too.

You’ll find the sunrise icon in your device tray with a few different options once the program has been installed and running. When you press 'Preferences,' you can preview the various screensavers, set how much idle time is required before the screensaver begins running, assign custom routes, etc. After you've set it all up, the program will quietly run in the background, and when it senses that you've been idle, it will activate your screensaver. 

A truly unique desktop, from start to sleep

Before Dawn is a great personalization program that you can use to create your own screensaver. While the tools needed to make the program are for advanced coders, anyone that can familiarize themselves with the program can make their own unique screensaver. It’s more similar to a web page running on full screen rather than an app, so you can give it a good try.