Military Aircraft Spotter Screensaver
The Spotter screensaver is a live world map of military and special aircraft in the air right now — callsign, type and altitude — sourced from the open ADS-B community network through Afterglow's background pipeline. It's free, runs in your browser, and ESC exits.
How the Spotter screensaver works
A background pipeline pulls military and special aircraft from the adsb.lol community ADS-B network, which is key-less but can't be read directly by a browser, and saves a small snapshot file.
The saver loads that snapshot and plots each aircraft on a world map as a small triangle pointed along its heading.
Aircraft carry a short motion trail and are labelled with their callsign; a live count and ticker list types and flight levels.
The snapshot refreshes on a schedule so positions stay current.
A worked example
Triangles crawl across the map — a C17 over the Pacific, a HAWK trainer over Texas — each tagged with its callsign and flight level, with the ticker reading off types as new aircraft appear and others land.
Settings & tips
- Aircraft color sets the marker and trail color.
- Background sets the map backdrop.
- Run
automation/run.py milairon your pipeline machine to refresh the snapshot.
Frequently asked questions
- Is the aircraft data real?
- Yes. It comes from the adsb.lol community ADS-B network — real transponder positions of military and special aircraft, refreshed on a schedule.
- Why does it use a pipeline?
- The ADS-B source is key-less but isn't readable directly from a browser, so a small background script fetches it and saves a snapshot the saver can load.
- Does it track every plane?
- No — it focuses on military and special aircraft. The Flight Radar saver covers civilian traffic around airports.
- Does it need a key?
- No keys anywhere. The pipeline uses a free community feed; the saver just reads the saved snapshot.
- Is it free?
- Yes — free, no download, in your browser.