hollywood

February 23, 2026 · View on GitHub

Fill your console with Hollywood melodrama technobabble.

This utility splits your terminal into multiple panes of genuine technobabble, perfectly suitable for any Hollywood geek melodrama. It is particularly suitable on any number of computer consoles in the background of any excellent schlock technothriller.

For more information, visit hollywood.computer.

Quick Start

Run in Docker (no installation needed):

docker run -it --rm cgr.dev/chainguard/hollywood

Install on Ubuntu/Debian:

sudo apt install hollywood

Install on Chainguard OS (Wolfi):

apk add hollywood

Usage

hollywood                          # run with defaults
hollywood -s 5                     # limit to 5 splits
hollywood -d 30                    # rearrange panes every 30 seconds
hollywood -s 8 -d 15               # combine options

Press Ctrl-C to quit.

Samples

YouTube stream
MP4 download (suitable as a Zoom/Meet background)

As Seen On

Hollywood has been spotted in the wild on television, in commercials, and across the internet:

Widgets

Hollywood includes 20 visual widgets that are randomly selected and arranged:

Widget	Description
`apg`	Random password generation
`atop`	Advanced system monitor
`bat`	Syntax-highlighted source code
`bmon`	Network bandwidth monitor
`cmatrix`	Matrix-style digital rain
`code`	Colorized source code display
`errno`	Scrolling error code definitions
`figlet`	Large ASCII text banners
`hexdump`	Hex dump of binary files
`htop`	Interactive process viewer
`jp2a`	JPEG to ASCII art conversion
`logs`	Colorized system log files
`man`	Random colorized man pages
`map`	World map in ASCII art
`mplayer`	Video to ASCII art animation
`pv`	Data transfer progress bars
`speedometer`	Network traffic graphs
`sshart`	SSH key fingerprint art
`stat`	File and device statistics
`tree`	Directory tree visualization

Security Note

Some widgets display real system information (processes, logs, network stats, file system details) that could be sensitive. For demonstrations or presentations, consider running in a container:

docker run -it --rm dustinkirkland/hollywood

Contributing

Widget design rules:

Must work as a non-root user
Must display information indefinitely
Must not exhaust memory or overload the system
Must not be too egregious with I/O
Must not require outbound internet access

Packages

License

Apache-2.0. See the LICENSE file or apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.