I have long been an advocate of software that brings the holiday spirit to our everyday devices. Just look at the Snoverlay 2 jailbreak tweak that we shared back in 2021 for jailbroken iPhones and iPads that caused snowflakes to rain down your entire display, regardless of what interface you may have been using.
But if you’re using a Mac instead of a jailbroken iPhone, then you’ll be happy to know I’ve been following a jolly project called Festivitas by iOS developer Simon Støvring for several days, and it finally matured to public release this Wednesday morning.
I love this time of the year and what it represents, so I’m excited to talk about Festivitas. It’s an app for macOS that brings animated Christmas lights to your Mac’s Menu Bar and/or Dock, just as depicted in the animated GIF example above.
Festivitas is fully customizable, offering options to configure for the festive lights that appear on your Mac’s Menu Bar and Dock independently of one another and offering an option to automatically update the application when an update becomes available.
For the Dock, users are able to:
- How or show festive lights on the Dock
- Adjust the thickness of the light cable via a slider
- Adjust the size of the light bulbs via a slider
- Adjust the distance between the light bulbs via a slider
- Choose a light pattern:
- Always On
- Every N Light
- Sequence
- Blink
- Configuring colors
- And more…
When choosing the Every N Light option, you can pick the speed of the animation via a slider and configure the lighting distance of each light (every other by default). When choosing the Sequence option, you can pick the speed of the animation via a slider and configure which lights actually light up and when. Lastly, when choosing the Blink option, you can pick the speed of the animation only.
The Menu Bar settings are largely the same as the Dock settings, albeit with the addition of two additional parameters: a Drop Width setting that lets you configure the distance between hanging drops from the Menu Bar, and a Drop Height setting that lets you configure the distance hanging down from the your Mac’s Menu Bar.
Støvring is no novice to software development and is in fact behind the popular Runestone text editor for iOS and iPadOS, which serves as one of the slickest syntax editors I’ve ever seen or used. As a result, it should be a given that Festivitas isn’t a free download, but rather something you can purchase from Gumroad for as little as €4, but with the option to pay more than that if you feel it’s worth it.
You can learn more about Festivitas and how it can get your Mac into the holiday spirit this year by visiting the app’s dedicated web page.