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I have a vast collection of memes, animated gifs and other pictures like tidbits I would like to display randomly as a screen saver (or as a slide show that I can snap to a windows screen quadrant).

I would like the option to display many pictures on screen at a time, hopefully side-by-side rather than randomly placed. Similarly if it is a slide show application it would have to support either multiple pictures simultaneously or allow running multiple instances of the slide show as to display a different picture in each window snapped to a quadrant.

The only screen saver I have come across that is close to these features is the one that comes with the discontinued Google Picasa, however it lacks the support for formats other than JPEG and has no side-by-side display, only random placement (often on top of each other). It also seems to never display certain images out of my 21000+ pictures, as if the random number generator doesn't reach that far, or perhaps it has issues with some JPGs as well.

I am dying to find a solution or any kind. I am also pondering how difficult could it be to learn to code and build one myself.

The absolute ideal version of this would be a screen saver that splits my 16:9 screen to six+ [optional] equal parts (two rows of three). It would first fills all six with pics, then changes one of them (in order) every [optional] seconds, can scale down the pic for the space, can upscale the pic (preferably with AI), works with .webp, .jfif, .png, animated .gif files, with working random file picker for vast quantities of pics. Should allow for pressing delete button to delete the picture (with confirmation) so there is no need for a separate photo manager UI. It is an absolute nightmare to try to find and delete a picture you hate with other savers if you like to display the images tidy without the filenames.

I would be willing to pay for a big fat license fee for a screen saver like this if one was made.

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https://www.free-photo-screensaver.com/downloads/

I was suspicious of the convenient-looking URL at first, but the demo version is surprisingly good. I could see myself paying the $20 for the full version.

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After years of using Directory Opus I realized its built in viewer does exactly what I need. It supports multiple instances so I can just snap windows side by side, and add as many snap areas as I like with PowerToys.

The biggest missing features from the DO viewer is going back to previous picture (which doesn't work in random mode) and no support for animated .webp files.

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