A screensaver is an animated image that is activated on a personal computer display when no user activity has been sensed for a certain time. The original purpose of a screensaver was to prevent burn-in, but in fact, today's CRT display technology makes burn-in unlikely except under extreme conditions.

Despite the unlikely ness of burn-in for the regular computer user, screensavers give companies a further opportunity to promote their own corporate branding and identity, by either installing branded screen savers on internal office machines, or by releasing them for use in the public domain - generally by adding a link to download the screensaver from their web site.