Analogue static was never nothing. An untuned television amplified whatever radio noise reached its antenna , most of it terrestrial interference and the receiver’s own electronics, with a very small contribution from cosmic microwave background radiation. Digital tuners produce a blank screen instead, which is tidier and much less interesting.
What it simulates
Analogue television static: rapidly changing monochrome grain across the whole screen. It is generated on a canvas rather than played as a video, so it never loops and never repeats.
Where it works
- A prop for film and photography set before digital broadcasting, where a genuinely untuned television is now hard to find.
- A visual placeholder on a screen that has to look occupied.
- A transition or background element in a video edit.
- A demonstration of what a display looks like with completely random content , useful when comparing motion handling between panels.
How to run it
- Press Start fullscreen.
- Press Esc or tap Exit to stop it.
This is a visual effect only , there is no audio. If you came looking for white noise to sleep or concentrate to, that is a sound, and this page does not produce one.
A note on efficiency
Static is expensive to draw honestly: a naive implementation allocates a fresh frame of random pixels sixty times a second and produces a great deal of work for the browser. This one reuses a single buffer, writes one word per pixel and runs at a lower frame rate , static has no motion to follow, so the grain looks identical and the machine does a fraction of the work. On a phone that is the difference between a warm battery and an unremarkable one.
Related screens
No Signal TV for the digital equivalent, Broken Screen for panel failure, grey screen for the flat version of the same brightness.
White noise screen questions
Does this play a sound?
No. It is purely visual , animated grain with no audio track. Sleep and focus white noise is a different thing entirely.
Was TV static really from the Big Bang?
A tiny fraction of it. Most analogue static came from terrestrial interference and the television’s own electronics; a very small portion of the signal reaching an antenna was cosmic microwave background radiation. It is a real connection, just a much smaller one than the story usually suggests.
Will this drain my battery?
Less than you would expect. The effect is drawn with a reused buffer at a reduced frame rate rather than regenerating a full resolution frame sixty times a second, which cuts the work substantially. Any fullscreen animation costs more than a static page, though.