Screen Soft Light / Scenes / FIREPLACE SCREEN

Tap anywhere to hear the fire

No. 001 · FIREPLACE SCREEN

Fireplace screen — a yule log fire for any screen

  • 01 Flames that never loop
  • 02 Crackle generated in the browser
  • 03 Sleep timer that lets it burn down

Turn a TV, monitor or tablet into a log fire. The flames are drawn live rather than played from a video, so they never repeat, and the screen throws a warm, flickering glow into the room. Tap once to hear it crackle, set a sleep timer and let it burn down.

Other fire screens —
Candle lightChristmas countdownNew Year countdown
§ 01

A fire that is also a light

Most fireplace videos are filmed in a dark room and look flat on a bright screen. This one is built as a light source first: a deep, near-black background with a warm glow around 1,900K that brightens and dims with the flames, so a dark room picks up the same moving orange light a real fire gives off.

§ 02

A yule log video is a few minutes of footage played on repeat, and the seam becomes obvious once you have noticed it.

Why it never loops

A yule log video is a few minutes of footage played on repeat, and the seam becomes obvious once you have noticed it. Here every flame is a short-lived particle drawn by your browser: hundreds rise, sway and cool from yellow-white through orange to deep red each second, and the pattern is never the same twice.

§ 03

For the TV at Christmas

Putting a fire on the television is a holiday tradition that began with a New York station broadcasting a burning yule log on Christmas Eve 1966. To do it with this page, open it in your smart TV's web browser, or cast a Chrome tab from a laptop, then press Fullscreen.

Procedure

Three moves to peak output

  1. 01

    Go fullscreen

    Press Fullscreen (or F, or double-click the fire). On a TV, open the page in its browser or cast a laptop tab.

  2. 02

    Listen to it burn

    The fire sound — a low rumble with the snap of burning wood — starts the first time you tap the page. Untick Fire sound for a silent fire. Nothing is downloaded; the sound is made on the spot.

  3. 03

    Add Christmas music, or not

    Tick Christmas music for carols on a music box with sleigh bells over the fire; untick it for just the fire. A sleep timer of 15 minutes to 2 hours lets it all die down and go out.

Inquiries

Questions worth asking

Q.01 Does it work on a smart TV?
Any TV with a web browser can open it, though some TV browsers lack fullscreen. Casting a laptop or phone browser tab to the TV (Chromecast, AirPlay or HDMI) gives the most reliable full picture.
Q.02 Is this a video?
No. The flames are drawn live by your browser, so the fire never loops back to the same moment, there is no buffering and it uses almost no data. The crackle is generated the same way rather than streamed.
Q.03 Will it turn itself off?
Choose a sleep timer of 15 minutes to 2 hours and the fire dies down over the final minute, crackle and all, then goes out. Leave it on Off to let it burn for as long as the page is open.
Q.04 How do I keep the screen from going to sleep?
Browsers that support the Screen Wake Lock API (Chrome, Edge and recent Safari) keep the screen on while the fire burns. On other devices, turn off auto-lock or the screen saver while you use it.
Cross-reference

Try adjacent plates