[Please note that the screensaver is discontinued. It should still work, but we cannot provide support for it]
The SecuritySpy screensaver allows you to view live video from one or more SecuritySpy servers, as a full-screen screensaver on your Mac. This can be a convenient and useful way to monitor your cameras, and this tutorial will show you how to set this up.
The screensaver works by connecting to SecuritySpy’s web interface to obtain the video streams. If you are connecting over a local network, you simply have to enable the web server feature within SecuritySpy, via the Web Server Settings window. If you are connecting over the internet you will first have to set up SecuritySpy for remote monitoring.
Once you have enabled SecuritySpy’s web server, download the SecuritySpy screensaver, double-click on it, and you will be asked to confirm that you want to install it on your Mac. Once installed, you will see a SecuritySpy item in the list of available screensavers in the Desktop & Screen Saver system preference. On the right side of the Desktop & Screen Saver window, click the Screen Saver Options button to configure the screensaver:
Add a new server by clicking the plus button. In this way, you can add multiple SecuritySpy servers to the screensaver.
If you are connecting over a local network, then the address is simply the local (LAN) IP address of the Mac running SecuritySpy. To avoid this address from changing, which would break the screensaver connection, you will need to configure the SecuritySpy Mac with a static address on your local network.
If you are connecting over the internet, then the address is the public (internet) address of your SecuritySpy server. If your ISP supplies you with a static internet IP address you can use that, otherwise, create yourself a DDNS address via the Web Server Settings window in SecuritySpy and enter this here (it will be in the form example.viewcam.me). DDNS stands for Dynamic Domain Name System: it provides you with a hostname that updates whenever your public IP address changes (which is usually whenever your router disconnects and reconnects to the internet).
In both cases, if you are using default ports (8000 for HTTP and 8001 for HTTPS), you do not need to specify a port number. However if you are not using these default ports, you will have to specify this in the Address box using a colon, as shown above. If you want to use an encrypted HTTPS connection, turn on the Use SSL option (provided you have set this up in SecuritySpy).
If you have enabled password protection in SecuritySpy, make sure to enter these details into the screensaver.
Finally, specify a frame rate for the video streams – higher frame rates provide more fluid video, but at the cost of increased CPU usage on both client and server.
By default, all cameras from the server will be detected and added for display by the screensaver. However, if you want only certain cameras included in the display, then click the Cameras tab and make your selections:
In the above example, all cameras except Street 2 will be displayed. Once you are done with the configuration, click OK and you should see all cameras displayed:
I like the screensaver, but I am worried about burn-in on my Apple display. Is there a way to have the camera feeds switch positions with one another on the screen from time to time?
Hi John, sorry but there is currently no feature in the screensaver that does what you are describing. Fortunately, modern displays don’t suffer from burn-in, so unless you are using an old monitor (particularly a CRT rather than LCD) I don’t think you have to worry about this particular problem.
Hi, great bit of software dude..just trialling SS at the mo. Have the screensaver runnng on my imac on my local network with no dramas at all but it reverts to a black screen after a few minutes… I have localhost in the address field…
ANy ideas on the issue here?
PS…Long time Zoneminder user here….imprerssed with your software mate!
Cheers!
The screensaver isn’t great at re-connecting lost feeds for some reason, we’ll have a look at this but it may be a while as we’re currently working on some other more important SecuritySpy enhancements. If you want full-screen view on the Mac running SecuritySpy, then SecuritySpy itself has a full-screen mode – this might do what you want.
It seems that with the current release, if there are multiple displays connected to a Mac (in extend mode), the application is requesting multiple feeds from the Web server. Could this be fixed so that there is a single stream with the local machine mirroring the first screen?
If you are running SecuritySpy simultaneously under two different user accounts then each instance is separate and you will get two connections to each camera, however if you are running a single instance of SecuritySpy under a single user account, then SecuritySpy will always only pull in a single feed from each camera, no matter how many displays are connected to your Mac.
Just curious: Does this still work on modern versions of macOS?
I’m currently running macOS 10.15.7 (Catalina), and just installed the screensaver. But when I go into Screen Saver Options and specify the address, username, and password I use to connect to the SecuritySpy web server, I see no cameras listed.
Hi David, the screensaver is unfortunately now discontinued and hasn’t been updated now for quite some time. However it should still work if you have entered all the right details into it. If you aren’t seeing any cameras, check that the web account you are using has permission to access cameras, under Preferences > Web in SecuritySpy. You could also try a restart of the Mac that is running the screensaver.
Can confirm the screensaver still works on an M1 iMac running macOS 12.3.1. I did not expect that to work out on this new computer. I absolutely love the screen saver and have been using it for a good 5+ years on several computers. Any chance I can talk you into releasing the source code so we (your loving users) can make it even better?
It’s great that the screensaver still works after all this time! We are happy to make the code public so that users can contribute to the project and hopefully keep it going. To this end, we have just set up a GitHub repo for it at https://github.com/BenSoftwareLtd/SecuritySpy-Screensaver