Today I released a big update for Life Saver TV, my version of the Life Saver screensaver for Apple TV. This is the first update for it in about five years, and a big one. I decided to harness the power of Claude Code to add a lot of features to it, while fixing some outstanding bugs.

There’s a very long release notes on GitHub if you’re more into reading lists, though it’s a bit too granular. I can just tell you what is new and cool here…

Most importantly, you can now set a smaller grid size and a faster animation speed that truly lets you enjoy Conway’s Game of Life as you can in other places. This is coupled with a new “Colorful Life” preset in the first menu, which configures everything needed for this.

There’s also just a lot of new configuration options in the “Advanced Mode” menu, which is new.

• You can fully customize the colors now, just like in the macOS screensaver.
• You can manually switch between a white and black background, also just like in the macOS screensaver.
• You can pick from different “Starting Patterns” to determine how life is splattered across the screen at the start and during resets.
• You can switch from the default toroidal grid to a fake infinite grid where life can extend past the edges of the screen.
• A “Respawn Mode” setting lets you select whether all life is eradicated when the stasis check kicks in, or if new life should be added to the static life on the grid. (This keeps boards from going fully static, which is bad for a screensaver and OLED TVs.)
• There’s a new “Ken Burns” camera option (which you can see in the GIF above here) where the camera will slowly (debatably) zoom and pan across the grid. (This actually makes me a little motion sick I think, but I left it in.)’

Without further ado…

You can buy Life Saver TV on the App Store right now!