Ambient scenes · no downloads
Clock Background Themes
Animated scenes behind a large digital clock, for a second monitor, a projector, a television or a quiet corner of a room. Every one is drawn in the browser, so nothing loads and nothing buffers.
Pick a scene below and the same clock appears in front of it.
The gallery
Every Background
Each preview is the real scene running at a small size, so what you see here is what fills the screen.
Clouds
A bright blue sky with cumulus drifting slowly across it.
City Skyline
A night city with windows flickering across the towers.
Forest
Dark trunks at dusk with fireflies drifting between them.
Galaxy
Nebula clouds turning slowly behind a deep field of stars.
Ocean Waves
Rolling swell breaking towards sand, with gulls overhead.
Thunderstorm
Heavy rain under low cloud, cut by lightning.
Gradient Flow
Soft blobs of colour drifting and blending. No subject at all.
Lanterns
Paper lanterns rising through a night sky over still water.
Aquarium
Drifting fish, rising bubbles and soft blue light.
Rain
Falling rain with a distant flash of lightning.
Fireplace
Flickering flames and rising embers.
Ceiling Fan
A slowly turning fan at three speeds.
Nature
Layered hills, drifting mist and a slow sun.
Water
Expanding ripples and shifting surface light.
Lava Lamp
Slow blobs rising and falling in a warm glow.
Christmas
Snowfall, string lights and a countdown to 25 December.
Halloween
Moonlight, bats, fog and a countdown to 31 October.
Fall
Drifting leaves and a countdown to the equinox.
Starfield
A deep field of stars with the occasional meteor.
Snowfall
Steady snow over a drifted horizon, no decorations.
Sunset
A sun sinking into the sea under a banded sky.
Matrix
Columns of green characters falling down a black screen.
Aurora
Slow curtains of green and violet over a starlit ridge.
Sakura
Cherry blossom petals tumbling under a pale moon.
Neon Grid
A striped sun over an endless glowing retro grid.
Bokeh
Drifting circles of out-of-focus colour.
Candle
One candle burning in the dark with a soft halo.
Fireworks
Colour bursts over a skyline, counting to New Year.
Valentine
Rising hearts and a countdown to 14 February.
Thanksgiving
Autumn leaves and a countdown to the fourth Thursday.
Choosing one
Which Background for Which Room
| Where | Pick | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Beside your work, on a second screen | Nature, fan | Almost no movement, so it will not pull your eye mid-sentence |
| A living room television | Fireplace, aquarium | Something for a room to look at, with a clock readable from the sofa |
| A waiting area or reception | Aquarium, water | Calm, impersonal and pleasant to glance at repeatedly |
| Late evening, low light | Fireplace, lava lamp | Warm colours with very little blue light |
| A warm room in summer | Water, rain | Cool tones read as cooler, which is perceptual but reliable |
| A classroom in December | Christmas | The countdown is a talking point and the clock still works |
| Study or focused reading | Rain, nature | Steady, low-information backgrounds that fade out of awareness |
| A party or event screen | Halloween, lava lamp | Enough happening to be worth looking at |
How they work
Why There Are No Video Files
Every scene here is built from gradients, borders and CSS keyframes. That decision has consequences worth explaining.
Nothing to Load
A looping ambient video is typically five to fifty megabytes. These scenes add a few kilobytes to a page you have already loaded, so they start instantly even on a slow connection and cost nothing on a metered one.
No Visible Loop
Video loops give themselves away because the seam repeats. Here each element runs on its own duration and delay, and because those do not divide evenly into one another the combined pattern takes a very long time to come back round.
Sharp at Any Size
Vector shapes and gradients scale cleanly from a phone to a projector. A video encoded for one resolution has to be stretched for anything larger, and it shows.
Answers
Background Questions
File sizes, motion, sound, battery and the seasonal countdowns.
Are these videos or images?
Neither. Every scene is drawn with CSS gradients and animation, which means there is nothing to download, nothing to buffer, and the whole page weighs a few kilobytes rather than the several megabytes a looping video would need. They also stay sharp at any screen size, because there are no pixels to stretch.
Which one should I use while working?
Something with as little motion as possible. Nature is the quietest, followed by the fan and the lava lamp. Rain, snow and falling leaves have movement across the whole screen, which is fine on a second monitor but distracting directly in front of you.
Can I stop the animation?
Every scene has a pause button that freezes the motion while keeping the colours. If your operating system is set to reduce motion, the scene starts paused without you asking.
Do any of them have sound?
No. All scenes are silent on purpose, so they sit alongside your own music or an ambient sound app without two things competing. It also means one will not surprise a quiet room.
Will they drain my laptop battery?
Continuous animation always costs some power, though far less than video playback. Pausing the motion leaves you with a still coloured background that costs almost nothing.
Can I use one as a screensaver?
Put the browser in full screen and turn off the system screensaver. It is not a true screensaver, so on an OLED panel it is worth avoiding many hours with the clock fixed in one position.
Which ones have a countdown?
Christmas counts to 25 December, Halloween to 31 October and Fall to the September equinox. All three roll over to the following year automatically and use your own time zone. For any other date, the countdown timer takes a custom target.