Fake Loading Screen Generator
Four platform loading styles with real indicator behaviour, a custom message, and a bar that never finishes if you want it that way.
For parody, education, and mockups only
Clear it for a wordless boot screen, which is what macOS actually shows.
Never completes stalls at 99 per cent for as long as you leave it. Escape exits fullscreen at any time.
Everything here runs on your device. Nothing you enter is uploaded or stored.
Four loading screens with the correct indicator behaviour for each platform, a message you can change, and pacing from fifteen seconds to never. Escape exits immediately.
How to use it
- Pick a style: Windows, macOS boot, Android, or a Linux boot log.
- Type the message that should appear, or clear it entirely.
- Choose the pacing. Never completes stalls at 99 per cent for as long as you leave it.
- Press Start. Press Escape whenever you want out.
Each platform’s indicator behaves differently, and that is the whole tool
Copying the colours of a loading screen gets you nowhere. What identifies a platform is how its indicator moves.
Windows uses a ring of dots that orbit at an eased rate, so they bunch as they come over the top of the circle and spread as they fall. They are not evenly spaced at any moment. That bunching is the difference between the real thing and any CSS spinner you have ever seen.
macOS at boot shows a thin determinate rail and no text whatsoever. Adding a message to it is what makes most fakes wrong — the real screen is silent, so the message field here is optional and empty is the accurate setting.
Android uses a material indeterminate arc, and this is the one most versions get wrong. It does two things at once: the arc rotates, and the arc’s own length oscillates between roughly 20 and 280 degrees on a slower cycle. Rotating a fixed-length arc is the common shortcut and it reads as wrong immediately, even to someone who could not tell you why.
Linux scrolls a boot log, left-aligned monospace with a bracketed timestamp and an OK or FAIL tag.
Uneven timing is what makes the boot log work
Evenly spaced log lines read as a loop. A real boot does not behave that way: several units come up inside the same forty milliseconds, then nothing happens for two seconds while a disk spins up or a network interface waits for a lease.
The gaps here are generated from a seed so they stay identical run to run, with most gaps tight and the occasional long stall. Roughly one line in twenty-five is marked FAIL, because a boot log where everything succeeds looks curated and a boot log where half of it fails looks broken.
Why the never-completes option exists
A progress bar that fills evenly to 100 per cent reads as an animation, because real installers stall. The pacing here uses a cubic ease-out — quick through the first third, slower through the middle, then a crawl — and the never-completes setting caps that curve at 99 per cent permanently.
The ceiling matters as much as the curve. Reaching 100 per cent forces the screen to do something next, and nothing it could do would be convincing.
What it does not do
It reproduces no platform logo, since those are trademarks. It cannot install anything, cannot read your system, cannot block your keyboard, and cannot prevent the tab being closed. On iPhone there is no Fullscreen API at all, so the fallback is a fixed full-viewport overlay with the address bar still visible, and the hint text says so rather than looking broken.
Nothing is uploaded and no permission is requested.
Style reference
| Style | Indicator | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | Eased dot ring | Message below |
| macOS boot | Thin determinate rail | None by default |
| Android | Rotating arc with a breathing sweep | Message below |
| Linux boot log | Scrolling timestamped lines | The log itself |
Pacing reference
| Setting | Duration | Ceiling |
|---|---|---|
| Fast | 15 seconds | 100% |
| Normal | 60 seconds | 100% |
| Slow | 5 minutes | 100% |
| Never completes | Indefinite | 99% |
Questions
How do I get out of it?
Press Escape. It is bound before the screen appears and works whether the browser granted true fullscreen or fell back to a fixed overlay. The Exit button does the same if there is no keyboard to hand.
What does never completes actually do?
It eases toward a ceiling of 99 per cent and stops there, however long it runs. A screen that hits 100 per cent has to do something next and there is nothing convincing for it to do, so stopping short means it can run indefinitely without ever needing a resolution.
Why do the four styles look so different?
Because each platform's loading indicator behaves differently, and copying only the colours is what makes a fake look wrong. Windows uses an eased dot ring, macOS a thin determinate rail with no text at all, Android an arc that rotates while its own length grows and shrinks, and Linux a scrolling boot log.
Does the Linux boot log say anything real?
The unit names are the ordinary systemd vocabulary anyone sees at boot, but the timings are invented and the log describes nothing about your machine. The gaps between lines are deliberately uneven, because real logs cluster several units into the same few milliseconds and then stall.
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