Festivitas Lets You Add Holiday Lights to Your Mac Desktop

If you're looking to get into the holiday spirit, developer Simon Støvring this week released Festivitas, a simple macOS app that lets you customize your Mac desktop with colorful string lights.

festivitas app
Festivitas adds lights to the Mac's dock and menu bar. Light size, distance, and cable thickness can be customized, as can the colors and the light changing sequence.

When Festivitas is first launched, it requires accessibility features to locate the dock and add the lights. Permissions can be revoked by going to System Settings > Privacy and Security > Accessibility.

Festivitas is compatible with Macs running macOS 14.6 and later, and it can be downloaded for four euros, which is equivalent to approximately $4.23.

Popular Stories

iPhone 17 Pro Blue Feature Tighter Crop

iPhone 17 Pro Launching Later This Year With These 13 New Features

Wednesday April 23, 2025 8:31 am PDT by
While the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are not expected to launch until September, there are already plenty of rumors about the devices. Below, we recap key changes rumored for the iPhone 17 Pro models as of April 2025: Aluminum frame: iPhone 17 Pro models are rumored to have an aluminum frame, whereas the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro models have a titanium frame, and the iPhone ...
iphone 17 dummies sonny dickson

iPhone 17 Air Almost as Thin as Its Buttons, New Images Show

Thursday April 24, 2025 2:14 am PDT by
If you missed the video showing dummy models of Apple's all-new super thin iPhone 17 Air that's expected later this year, Sonny Dickson this morning shared some further images of the device in close alignment with the other dummy models in the iPhone 17 lineup, indicating just how thin it is likely to be in comparison. The iPhone 17 Air is expected to be around 5.5mm thick – with a thicker ...
iPhone 17 Air Pastel Feature

iPhone 17 Air Launching Later This Year With These 16 New Features

Thursday April 24, 2025 8:24 am PDT by
While the so-called "iPhone 17 Air" is not expected to launch until September, there are already plenty of rumors about the ultra-thin device. Overall, the iPhone 17 Air sounds like a mixed bag. While the device is expected to have an impressively thin and light design, rumors indicate it will have some compromises compared to iPhone 17 Pro models, including only a single rear camera, a...
AirPods Pro 3 Mock Feature

AirPods Pro 3 Just Months Away – Here's What We Know

Friday April 18, 2025 5:16 am PDT by
Despite being more than two years old, Apple's AirPods Pro 2 still dominate the premium wireless‑earbud space, thanks to a potent mix of top‑tier audio, class‑leading noise cancellation, and Apple's habit of delivering major new features through software updates. With AirPods Pro 3 widely expected to arrive in 2025, prospective buyers now face a familiar dilemma: snap up the proven...
iphone 17 air dummy unbox therapy

iPhone 17 Air's Extreme Thinness Demoed in New Video

Tuesday April 22, 2025 10:22 am PDT by
Apple plans to release an all-new super thin iPhone this year, debuting it alongside the iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max. We've seen pictures of dummy models, cases, and renders with the design, but Lewis Hilsenteger of Unbox Therapy today showed off newer dummy models that give us a better idea of just how thin the "iPhone 17 Air" will be. The iPhone 17 Air is expected to be ...
Global Close Your Rings Day Pin

Apple Stores Giving Away a Limited-Edition Pin For Free Today

Thursday April 24, 2025 10:15 am PDT by
Starting today, April 24, Apple Stores around the world are giving away a special pin for free to customers who request one, while supplies last. Photo Credit: Filip Chudzinski The enamel pin's design is inspired by the Global Close Your Rings Day award in the Activity app, which Apple Watch users can receive by closing all three Activity rings today. The limited-edition pin is the physical...
Apple Logo Spotlight Blue

White House Hits Back at Apple's Massive EU Fine

Thursday April 24, 2025 5:57 am PDT by
Apple's $570 million fine from the EU has triggered a sharp rebuke from the White House, which called the fine a form of economic extortion, Reuters reports. The fine was announced on Wednesday by the European Commission, following a formal investigation into Apple's compliance with the bloc's Digital Markets Act (DMA), a landmark piece of legislation aimed at curbing the market dominance of ...
ipad air magic keyboard feature

iPadOS 19 Rumored to Show Mac-Like Menu Bar When Connected to Magic Keyboard

Thursday April 24, 2025 12:09 pm PDT by
When an iPad running iPadOS 19 is connected to a Magic Keyboard, a macOS-like menu bar will appear on the screen, according to the leaker Majin Bu. This change would further blur the lines between the iPad and the Mac. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman previously claimed that iPadOS 19 will be "more like macOS," with unspecified improvements to productivity, multitasking, and app window management,...

Top Rated Comments

hieranonymous Avatar
20 weeks ago
This feels like such a throwback to the nineties heyday of the classic MacOS, when novelty apps like this were common. macOS is all grown up now—vastly improved but with nary a trace of that old-timey whimsy.
Score: 25 Votes (Like | Disagree)
cateye Avatar
20 weeks ago
Worth mentioning that MacRumors forum member @Mithi made an adorbs desktop Christmas Tree app for MacOS ('https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/i-made-a-christmas-tree-for-your-mac.2373022/') a couple years ago and keeps improving and updating it each holiday since. And it's free!
Score: 24 Votes (Like | Disagree)
parkds Avatar
20 weeks ago
There was something back in the OS 9 era that did this. It might have simply been called Holiday Lights. I remember as a college kid really enjoying having them enabled this time of year.
Score: 21 Votes (Like | Disagree)
ErikGrim Avatar
20 weeks ago
Now we just need to resurrect that snow extension (Flurry?) that put snow on your desktop and would cover the top of your windows.
Score: 18 Votes (Like | Disagree)
DCYorke Avatar
20 weeks ago

There was something back in the OS 9 era that did this. It might have simply been called Holiday Lights. I remember as a college kid really enjoying having them enabled this time of year.
These were fun times. My favourite was Oscar the Grouch in the trash can!
Score: 17 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Sowelu Avatar
20 weeks ago

There was something back in the OS 9 era that did this. It might have simply been called Holiday Lights. I remember as a college kid really enjoying having them enabled this time of year.
Holiday Lights ('https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/16740/maclampsx') is still alive and well. Not as many features as the original, but it has been updated to work on modern macOS. It's now 'MacLampsX'. I am rocking it as we speak (see screen shot).

I like the lights to just be on top with a calming twinkle and a steady flow of light snow, of course. And these are incandescent-looking classic lights, not the cold and ugly LEDs that we are mostly subjected to today in both real life and apps. I reached out to the developer years ago wondering whatever happened to this app and he said he was thinking about resurrecting it, and he did!

I miss the good old days when a bit of whimsy was built into most apps and operating systems with theme and icon packs and novelty software such as this. Anyone remember Stick Software ('http://www.sticksoftware.com/')? Eyeballs still work on modern macOS! There were so many fun and goofy apps. Catz? Dogz?

The 90's and early 2000's will always be my favorite internet (wild wild west) and Mac era (even vintage PCs). What I would give for someone to update the entire After Dark Screensavers collection and re-release it. Berkley Systems was acquired and folded into a Sierra division after After Dark 4 was released, and their parent company killed most of their titles (including most of Sierra eventually). It was never even updated for WindowsXP and it never worked in OS X. There are a few modules out there that will run on modern versions of macOS, but it's just not the same, of course.

Nowadays GUIs are so cold, boring and stoic. Apple, the pioneers of beautiful icons completely destroyed them and now we are living with ugly tile icons, many are just glyphs slapped onto tiles, and to add insult to injury, we cannot change most of them. Remember Candy Bar? Why can't we have nice things anymore?

Anyway, I like that you can add lights onto the dock, so I will of course give Festivitas a go.

Attachment Image
Score: 10 Votes (Like | Disagree)