What is a fractal flame?

A fractal flame is an image produced by running a point through a small set of mathematical transforms over and over, chosen at random each step, and recording where it lands. Millions of those landings build up into a picture. The technique was developed by Scott Draves in 1992. Because the whole image is described by the transforms rather than by pixels, a flame is data that gets rendered rather than a file that gets displayed.

Are Atheria's fractal flames video files?

No. Each flame is a genome: a list of transforms with their affine coefficients, variation weights, colour coordinates and camera settings. Atheria renders it live on your Mac's GPU using Metal compute shaders. Nothing is streamed or downloaded, and the flame never loops, because it is being generated continuously rather than played back.

Can I create my own fractal flames on a Mac?

Yes. Atheria includes a Flame Creator that generates new genomes, mutates existing ones, and lets you set the palette and camera, then apply the result as your desktop wallpaper. You can also breed two flames together: Atheria crosses their genomes into a litter of six children that inherit whole pieces of both parents, and breeding the same pair again gives a different litter. The Flame Creator is free to try, with your flame live on your desktop while you shape it; keeping and sharing the flames you make is part of Atheria Pro, a one-time purchase. Atheria runs on macOS 15 Sequoia or later, on both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs.

Are live wallpapers distracting to work with?

Atheria's are built not to be. A fractal flame never loops, so there is no restart to catch your eye, and it drifts slowly enough that you stop registering it as movement. It also stops rendering entirely once the desktop is covered by windows, so it competes for neither your attention nor your battery while you work. The effect is closer to calm than to eye-catching, which is not what a process called a chaos game sounds like it would produce.

Live wallpapers, grown on your Mac

A flame is not a picture.
It is a set of numbers.

Atheria does not ship you a folder of fractal images. It ships the engine that grows them, live on your desktop. Pick one and watch it happen.

Download for Mac

$9.99 one-time macOS 15 or later No account, no subscription

Still image

It wakes with your phone

Atheria: Generative Art. A separate app, free for iPhone and iPad.

Save a flame as a Live Photo and it blooms once each time you wake the screen, then settles back. That is a real screen recording, not a mockup: Threefold Diamond-Polar Trio, one of the eighteen on this page, grown on a phone and set as a lock screen.

Anything you grow travels. With both apps open, Handoff carries the flame you are making on the phone straight into the Flame Creator on your Mac.

Get the free iPhone and iPad app

A different app from the Mac one above. It grows flames and exports them; it cannot set a wallpaper, because iOS does not let a third-party app do that.

Why you keep it on

The part that has nothing to do with mathematics.

Everything above is what makes a flame interesting. None of it is why anyone leaves one running. A flame never loops, so there is no moment where it starts over and reminds you it is a file, and it moves slowly enough that you are never quite watching it.

That turns out to matter more than the mathematics does. It is calm, and it stays calm all day, which is not what you would expect from something built out of a chaos game.

Take it with you

Whichever flame you have picked, written out in full. Flames are part of Atheria Pro: one purchase, no subscription, no account.

These eighteen were all made in Atheria's Flame Creator, which generates new genomes from scratch, mutates the one you are looking at, sets the palette and camera, and applies the result to your desktop as a live wallpaper.

Paste it into Atheria's Flame Creator and it grows on your Mac, at your display's own resolution. Pasting a code is part of Pro; making your own flame is free to try. More on share codes

Download for Mac All features→

macOS 15 Sequoia or later, Apple Silicon and Intel.

What it costs to run

The honest version, not the marketing one.

A flame is real GPU work, and Atheria does not pretend otherwise. What it does instead is stop. When the desktop is fully covered by windows, rendering halts completely and picks up again when the desktop becomes visible. What it costs, and the Battery Saving controls

How Atheria compares to other Mac wallpaper apps→