Like OS X's built in screen savers? Got a bunch of photos or some artwork you'd like to turn into a screen saver? Don't want to switch between different folders using the 'Slide Show' option every time? So make your own screensaver!
OS X's built-in screen savers come in two flavors, bundles with some config files, or a bundle with true executable code inside. We're going to grab one of the first kind, and replace its image resources with our own artwork.
Read the rest of the article for the how-to...
[Editor's note: You should be reasonably comfortable with privileges and the terminal before proceeding. I haven't tried this myself yet, but it seems very straightforward and I'll give it a try later this week.]
Now, you can probably do all of this through the GUI, but you'd have to log-out then log in again as root, so I just used the terminal app for the first part. First start the terminal, and cd to the screen savers directory:
cd /System/Library/Screen\ Savers/next type ls -l and take a gander at the files and their permissions:
total 0A quick look shows there are .saver files and .slideSaver files. The .slideSavers are the ones we want to work with. Let's make a copy of the Forest.slideSaver and use it for our custom screen saver. Because we'll soon be opening the bundle up in the Finder, we'll want it located somewhere more convenient (and safe) than the System Library. So we'll:
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 264 Sep 7 2001 Abstract.slideSaver
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 264 Sep 14 23:58 Aqua Icons.saver
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 264 Sep 7 2001 Beach.slideSaver
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 264 Sep 7 2001 Cosmos.slideSaver
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 264 Sep 7 2001 Forest.slideSaver
drwxr-xr-x 3 root wheel 264 Sep 14 23:58 Random.saver
sudo cp -R Forest.slideSaver /Users/name/Library/Screen\ Savers/Replacing name with your user name, of course. Terminal will ask you for the root password; if you're the only user on the system, this password is usually just your own regular password.
sudo chown -R name /Users/name/Library/Screen Savers/Forest.slideSaver/again replace name with your own user name. Now if you go back to the Finder and Show Info on the Forest.slideSaver file, you should see that you are now its owner and have full read and write privileges. You can now exit the Terminal, and finish the rest of the job in the Finder.
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20020319105930302