Flight Radar Screensaver
The Flight Radar screensaver shows live aircraft around a major airport on a sweeping radar scope, each blip labelled with its callsign and altitude. Positions come from the free OpenSky Network and glide smoothly between updates. It's free, runs in your browser, and ESC exits.
How the Flight Radar screensaver works
A small background job fetches a live snapshot of aircraft positions from the OpenSky Network and saves the planes near each airport to a data file. (OpenSky only lets its own site read the API directly, so the data is fetched server-side and served as a plain file.)
The saver draws a radar scope centred on your chosen airport: concentric range rings labelled in kilometres, compass bearings, and a green sweep line that rotates like a real radar, leaving a fading trail.
Each aircraft's latitude and longitude is converted into a position on the scope relative to the airport. Between refreshes the saver dead-reckons every plane — advancing it along its heading at its known speed each frame — so the blips move continuously instead of jumping.
Blips are coloured by altitude, draw a short line in their direction of travel, and are tagged with the callsign and flight level (FLxxx). A header shows the airport and how many aircraft are in range.
A worked example
Pick London Heathrow with an 80 km range and you'll usually see dozens of aircraft — a steady stream lined up on final approach from the east or west, departures climbing away, and high-altitude traffic crossing overhead in green. Drop the range to 40 km to zoom into the approach; raise it to 160 km to catch aircraft still inbound.
Settings & tips
- Airport picks which field to watch — eight major hubs are built in.
- Range sets the scope radius in kilometres; smaller zooms into approaches, larger catches distant traffic.
- Turn callsigns off for a cleaner scope, or tune the sweep speed to taste.
Frequently asked questions
- Is the flight data real?
- Yes. Aircraft positions come from the OpenSky Network, a community-run flight-tracking project, refreshed on a schedule. Coverage depends on OpenSky's receivers, so some flights may be missing.
- Why do the planes move smoothly between updates?
- The data refreshes about once a minute, but the saver advances each plane along its heading at its known speed every frame, so the blips glide instead of jumping.
- Which airports can I choose?
- Eight major hubs are built in, including New York JFK, London Heathrow, Frankfurt, Dubai and Tokyo Haneda. Pick one in the settings.
- Does it need internet?
- Yes, it reads a live data file that needs a connection. Offline, it shows a short notice instead of the scope.
- Is this flight radar screensaver free?
- Yes, free and browser-based with no key or download. Run it fullscreen and press ESC to exit.