Fun
Matrix rain
Fill your screen with falling columns of glowing katakana and digits, tune the colour and pace, and hide a secret message that lights up as the rain passes.
Full screen: Space pauses · Esc exits · move the mouse or tap to show controls. The hidden message lights up as the rain passes over it.
Play and explore in your browser. No account needed.
Frequently asked questions
What characters does the digital rain use?
By default it mixes half-width Japanese katakana (the 56 characters from ｦ to ﾝ in Unicode) with the digits 0–9 and a few symbols, and mirrors each katakana glyph left to right for the familiar look. You can switch to binary, digits only or capital letters with digits, and turn the mirroring off.
Why do some characters show as boxes?
The page draws the rain with fonts already on your device rather than downloading one. Windows, macOS, iOS and Android all include fonts with half-width katakana, but a few minimal Linux installs or locked-down systems may not, and then you see empty boxes. Install a Japanese font such as Noto Sans CJK, or switch the characters to Binary, Digits or Letters.
How does the hidden message work?
The message is placed in the middle of the screen on the same grid as the rain, wrapped to fit and centred line by line. It stays invisible until a falling column reaches one of its cells; that letter then appears in bold and fades over about seven seconds. With a higher density the message fills in faster and stays readable, with a low density it flickers in and out. Up to 60 characters fit.
Can I use it as a real screensaver?
Within the browser, yes: Screensaver goes full screen, hides the cursor and controls and asks the browser to keep the screen awake. By default any mouse movement, tap or key press ends it, like a system screensaver; untick that option to leave only Esc. It does not start by itself when your computer is idle — a web page cannot install a system screensaver.
Does it respect reduced motion settings?
Yes. If your device asks for reduced motion, the page shows a still frame of the rain instead of an animation, with a button to play it anyway. Starting the screensaver counts as choosing to see motion, so it animates. The animation also stops while the tab is hidden, so it uses no power in the background.
Is this affiliated with the film that made falling code famous?
No. Digital rain has become a general visual style for computers and hacking in films, games and posters. This page is an independent, freely made version of that effect, with its own code and settings, and it is not connected to any film studio.
About this tool
Digital rain is the effect of glowing characters raining down a black screen in columns, each column led by a bright white head that leaves a fading trail behind it. It became a symbol of computers and hacking at the turn of the century and is still one of the most recognisable screen effects. This page draws it live on an HTML canvas in your browser, so it runs smoothly, costs nothing and needs no download.
Every setting changes the rain as you adjust it. Speed sets how many steps the rain moves per second, density sets how quickly empty columns start a new drop, and font size makes the characters large and chunky or small and dense. Each column falls at a slightly different pace so the screen never looks mechanical. Colours include the classic phosphor green, cyan, blue, purple, pink, red, amber, white and a rainbow that shifts across the columns, or any colour from the picker.
The hidden message is a nice touch for parties, classrooms and videos: type a name, a greeting or a date and it is woven into the grid, revealed only where the rain passes over it. Since the letters appear and fade at random, the message seems to emerge from the code rather than being printed on top.
Full screen gives you a clean display with pause and exit controls that appear when you move the mouse. Screensaver mode keeps the screen awake with the Screen Wake Lock API where your browser supports it and closes as soon as you touch anything. Everything runs locally; nothing is uploaded, and the animation pauses automatically whenever the tab is in the background.
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