After Hours Labs

~ $ winters

WinTers

Snow on your Windows and macOS desktop. It falls over every window and piles up on window tops, the taskbar and the bottom of the screen. Clicks pass through the snow, so it never gets in the way.

  • Free
  • No ads
  • Works offline

Download

Source code on GitHub Changelog Privacy policy

Features

  • Snowdrifts on windows and the Windows taskbar

    Drifts on your windows

    Snow builds up on window tops, the taskbar and the bottom of the screen, keeps a natural slope and slides off when you move, minimize or close a window.

  • A snowman on the macOS desktop

    Snowballs and snowmen

    Hold the sculpting keys and sweep the cursor along a drift to roll a snowball. Stack three from big to small and they become a snowman with a bucket hat and a carrot nose.

  • Snow falling over windows

    Wind and blizzards

    Light snow, steady snow or a blizzard; calm or wind at three strengths. The cursor drags the air along, and a quick flick scatters a drift.

  • WinTers menu in the macOS menu bar

    One menu for everything

    No windows, just a snowflake icon in the tray or menu bar: pause, snowfall and wind modes, the wiper, the shovel and launch at startup.

FAQ

No. The source code is open on GitHub, and the Microsoft Store version passes Microsoft's certification. The app never goes online. The portable build is not code-signed, so Windows SmartScreen may say “Windows protected your PC”: click More info, then Run anyway. If you'd rather skip that, install it from the Microsoft Store.

No. The snow is drawn by the GPU (Direct3D 11 on Windows, Metal on macOS). It pauses itself when the screen is locked, during sleep and in battery saver mode, and while paused the app uses almost no CPU.

Pause with Ctrl + Alt + S on Windows or Control + Option + S on macOS. To sculpt snowballs, hold Ctrl + left Alt (Control + Option on macOS). Pause, modes and startup are also in the snowflake icon's menu.

The app isn't signed with an Apple certificate. Click “Done”, open “System Settings → Privacy & Security” and click “Open Anyway” next to WinTers. You only need to do this once. Or run this in Terminal: xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/WinTers.app

Microsoft Store: Settings → Apps → WinTers → Uninstall. Portable: turn off startup in the menu, quit and delete the exe; you can remove the %APPDATA%\WinTers folder by hand. macOS: turn off “Open at Login”, quit and drag WinTers from Applications to the Trash.

System requirements

Windows
Windows 10 (version 1903 or later) or Windows 11, 64-bit
macOS
macOS 13 or later, Apple Silicon or Intel

Changelog