Crates.io Most Downloaded Screensaver
The Crates.io Most Downloaded screensaver ranks real all-time Rust crate download popularity. It is free, runs in your browser, and ESC exits.
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How the Crates.io Most Downloaded screensaver works
The saver reads real all-time Rust crate download popularity data from crates.io's own key-less public API.
Rows are ranked by their real latest reported total download count.
The pipeline refreshes periodically as the underlying dataset changes.
No key is required for this key-less public endpoint.
Why a few small crates dominate downloads
crates.io is the official package registry for the Rust programming language. It is maintained by the crates.io team, with support from the Rust Foundation, and Cargo fetches a project’s dependencies from it by default. Each crate has a download count, and the all-time totals are what this saver ranks.
The top of a list like this is rarely the big, well-known application frameworks. It tends to be small foundation libraries that sit underneath many other crates. Examples include hashbrown, a port of Google’s SwissTable hash table design that Rust’s standard HashMap is built on; syn, a parsing library for turning Rust tokens into a syntax tree, geared toward procedural macros; and getrandom, a library for retrieving random data from the operating system. Few developers pick these directly. They arrive as dependencies of other crates.
Download counts measure requests for crate files, not people. crates.io counts downloads by ingesting access logs from the content delivery networks that serve crate files, so every fetch counts, including repeat fetches by automated builds. Treat the ranking as a map of what the dependency tree rests on rather than a popularity contest.
A worked example
A real entry's most recent reported total download count is ranked against the real others, with bars easing into place as the board loads.
Settings & tips
- Counts are real all-time download totals from crates.io's own summary API.
- Accent recolours the bars and header text.
- crates.io is the official package registry for the Rust ecosystem.
Frequently asked questions
- Is this real data?
- Yes — real all-time Rust crate download popularity figures from crates.io's own public API.
- Is a key needed?
- No. This is a fully key-less public API.
- How often does it update?
- The pipeline re-reads the dataset periodically, on whatever schedule it changes.
- Is it free?
- Yes — free, no download, in your browser.
- Does a download equal a user?
- No. crates.io counts downloads from the access logs of the servers that deliver crate files, so one developer or build server fetching a crate many times adds many downloads. The counts reflect traffic, not people.
- Why are all-time totals used rather than recent ones?
- All-time totals change slowly, which suits a ranking board, and they reward crates that the ecosystem has depended on for years. A recent-downloads view would favour whatever was rebuilt most in the latest period.