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Custom Word of the Day

A from-scratch macOS screensaver that shows a rotating triplet — primary, secondary, tertiary — pulled from a CSV.

Built to replace Apple's Word of the Day screensaver. Recent security measures made it hard to resign and "tamper with" the integrity of Apple screensavers.

I use it to learn Japanese vocab.

The kit deliberately uses the names primary / secondary / tertiary instead of kanji / kana / meaning. Any triplet works:

Use case	Primary	Secondary	Tertiary
Japanese vocabulary	kanji	reading	meaning
English vocabulary	headword	pronunciation	definition
Korean vocabulary	hangul	romanization	meaning
Code review prompts	title	summary	detail

You don't have to fill the three types because of optional vars.

Build & install

Requirements: Xcode 15+ (or matching Swift toolchain) on macOS 13 or later.

scripts/import_csv.sh Samples/sample.csv      # produces build/wordlist.json
scripts/build_saver.sh                         # produces build/CustomWordOfTheDay.saver
scripts/install.sh                             # copies the .saver into ~/Library/Screen Savers/

scripts/install.sh opens the Wallpaper / Screen Saver pane at the end — pick Custom Word of the Day from the list.

Verify without taking over your screen

xcrun swift scripts/render_preview.swift build/CustomWordOfTheDay.saver /tmp/preview.png
xcrun swift scripts/render_grid.swift   build/CustomWordOfTheDay.saver /tmp/grid.png

These load the bundle, instantiate the ScreenSaverView subclass offscreen, tick a few frames, and write a PNG so you can eyeball the layout without activating the live screensaver.

Port to iOS / other Apple platforms

The screensaver is macOS-only — that's a platform limitation, not a code limitation. WordOfTheDayKit has no AppKit / UIKit imports, so it compiles unchanged into an iOS target. To build an iOS app that shows the same content:

1. Add WordOfTheDayKit to your iOS project (the Package.swift already lists .iOS(.v16) as a supported platform).
2. Build your own SwiftUI / UIKit view that reads from JSONWordList or CSVWordList and renders with EntrySelector.

The boundary is intentional: the kit owns the data and selection logic, the platform owns the rendering.

CSV format

Three columns, UTF-8, no header row required:

猫,ねこ,cat
書き初め,かきぞめ,"first calligraphy of the new year, traditionally Jan. 2"

Fields with commas, quotes, or newlines must be quoted; embed quotes by doubling them ("").