Nov 15, '07 02:30:00PM • Contributed by: Typhoon14
In previous versions of the Mac OS, an easy way to activate the screen saver was to trigger the ScreenSaverEngine application. In 10.5, though, there appears to be an issue with this technique.
If you also have the screen saver to come on after a set amount of time, the screensaver will dutifully activate at that time, even if it is already active. This results in some very interesting visuals, and a lot of GPU-churning as two copies of the screen saver vie for attention.
One solution I've found for this -- a technique that still allows you to put an executable in your dock, create a keyboard shortcut, etc., -- is to simply create an Automator action to activate the screensaver. Just open Automator, select Custom, select the Utilities category, and create a workflow consisting of the Start Screen Saver action. Save this workflow as an application, and you now have a tiny application that will activate the screen saver when clicked. Screensavers activated in this way do not seem to suffer from the double-saver syndrome.
