Screen Saver

A small program that takes over the display screen if there are no keystrokes or mouse movements for a specified duration. Screen savers were originally developed to prevent ghosting, the permanent etching of a pattern on a display screen. For older monochrome monitors, ghosting often occurred if the same pattern was displayed on a display screen for a long period of time. Screen savers would prevent this by either blanking out the screen entirely or by displaying a constantly moving image.

Modern display screens do not suffer so much from this problem. Today, therefore, screen savers are mostly an adornment, a way to liven up the computer. Many screen savers provide another benefit, hiding a user’s work from would-be snoopers. These screen savers fill the display with an image or animation until the user enters a password.

Webopedia Staff
Webopedia Staff
Since 1995, more than 100 tech experts and researchers have kept Webopedia’s definitions, articles, and study guides up to date. For more information on current editorial staff, please visit our About page.

Related Articles

@ Sign

Pronounced at sign or simply as at, this symbol is used in e-mail addressing to separate the user' name from the user's domain name,...

Munging

(MUHN-jing) Munging (address munging), is the act of altering an email address posted on a Web page to make it unreadable to bots and...

How to Create an RSS Feed

In the second installment of RSS how-to, we look at some of the nonrequired (optional) channel and item tags, discuss RSS specifications in-depth and...

Dictionary Attack

(n.) (1) A method used to break security systems, specifically password-based security systems, in which the attacker systematically tests all possible passwords beginning with...

ScalaHosting

ScalaHosting is a leading managed hosting provider that offers secure, scalable, and affordable...

HRIS

Human resources information system (HRIS) solutions help businesses manage multiple facets of their...

Best Managed Service Providers...

In today's business world, managed services are more critical than ever. They can...