Wayback Machine Pulse Screensaver
The Wayback Machine Pulse screensaver shows when the Wayback Machine last captured a rotating set of major websites, drawn key-less and live from the Internet Archive's public API — the internet quietly archiving itself. It's free, runs in your browser, and ESC exits.
How the Wayback Machine Pulse screensaver works
The saver checks the Internet Archive's public availability API for a rotating set of major real websites, with no key required.
Each site shows the real date and time of its most recent Wayback Machine snapshot.
The rotation cycles through a new site every few seconds.
Readings refresh on a schedule to catch newly captured snapshots.
A worked example
You might see wikipedia.org show a snapshot from moments ago, while a smaller site shows one from days back — a genuine reflection of how often each real site gets crawled.
Settings & tips
- Accent recolours the snapshot timestamps.
- The Internet Archive has preserved hundreds of billions of real web pages since 1996.
- High-traffic sites get captured far more often than obscure ones — a real crawl-frequency signal.
Frequently asked questions
- Is a key needed?
- No — the Internet Archive's public availability API is free and key-less.
- Does this show every page being saved?
- No — there's no public firehose of all saves; this checks a rotating set of major real sites for their latest real snapshot.
- What is the Wayback Machine?
- A real, free public service by the Internet Archive that preserves snapshots of web pages over time.
- Is it free?
- Yes — free, no download, in your browser.