Live Earthquake Map Screensaver
The Live Earthquakes screensaver plots recent earthquakes from the USGS feed onto a world map in real time, each one a pulsing ring sized and coloured by magnitude. It refreshes every few minutes and scrolls a ticker of the latest events. It's free, runs in your browser, and ESC exits.
How the Live Earthquakes screensaver works
Every few minutes the saver fetches the United States Geological Survey's public earthquake feed — a GeoJSON file the USGS updates continuously. Each quake comes with a magnitude, a place name, a time and a longitude/latitude.
Those coordinates are projected straight onto an equirectangular world map: longitude runs left to right, latitude top to bottom, so each quake's dot sits exactly where it happened on Earth.
Every quake is drawn as a pulsing ring that expands and fades on a loop, with a solid dot at the centre. The radius scales with magnitude and the colour steps from green (minor) through yellow and orange to red (major), so the biggest events stand out.
A status bar tallies the events and the strongest magnitude, shows a colour legend, and scrolls a ticker of the most recent quakes with how long ago each struck.
A worked example
With the window on Past day and no magnitude filter, a typical view shows a few hundred quakes worldwide — mostly small green dots clustered along plate boundaries like the Pacific 'Ring of Fire', with the occasional orange M4–5. Raise Min magnitude to 4.5 and the map clears to just the significant events; switch to Past week (M4.5+) to see the week's major earthquakes at a glance.
Settings & tips
- Time window chooses the USGS feed: past hour, past day, or a week of larger quakes.
- Raise Min magnitude to hide the constant background of tiny tremors and focus on big ones.
- Ticker speed sets how fast the latest-events strip scrolls along the bottom.
Frequently asked questions
- Is the earthquake data real and live?
- Yes. It comes straight from the USGS public earthquake feed and refreshes every few minutes, so you're seeing real quakes reported in roughly real time.
- What do the colours mean?
- Colour tracks magnitude: green is under 2.5, yellow up to 4.5, orange up to 6, and red is magnitude 6 and above. Dot size grows with magnitude too.
- Does it need an internet connection?
- Yes, it fetches live data from the USGS, so it needs to be online. Opened from a local file with no connection, it shows a short notice instead.
- Can I see only large earthquakes?
- Yes. Raise the minimum magnitude slider, or pick one of the magnitude-filtered time windows, to hide the constant background of tiny tremors.
- Is this earthquake screensaver free?
- Yes, completely free and browser-based, with nothing to install. Press Run fullscreen and press ESC to exit.