10.6: Run 32-bit screen savers in the background in 10.6

Feb 16, '10 07:30:00AM

Contributed by: ssciboz

Snow Leopard only hintSaveHollywood is not ready to work on Snow Leopard. Apparently this extends to any software that runs older screen savers in the background -- they'll appear with a system message reading "not compatible."

If I open System Preferences' Screen Savers panel as usual, my system tells me that old screen savers are not compatible. But if I open System Preferences in 32-bit mode, they seem to work (in the panel, but not always when playing). So I tried the Terminal command from this older hint, but had the same problem. Finally I searched how to run a screen saver in 32-bit mode from Terminal. For that, you do this:

arch -i386 AppToRun
So to run an older screen saver in the background, you'd use this command:
arch -i386 /System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaverEngine -background
Before running the above, open the Screen Saver System Preferences panel in 32-bit mode, and select and set up the SaveHollywood screen saver. It works!

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Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20100209053016662