Yes. It comes from a Lemmy instance's public data, refreshed every minute by the pipeline, so it tracks what's hot now.

No. Lemmy's public REST API is fully key-less.

A federated, Reddit-like link-aggregator and discussion platform made up of independently run instances.

Yes — free, no download, in your browser.

What does a post’s score represent?

In Lemmy’s ranking documentation, score is upvotes minus downvotes. Votes from other servers are delivered over federation, so the number can differ a little between instances.

Why is hot different from top?

Hot combines the score with the post’s age, using a gravity-style decay, so recent posts get a boost and old ones fade. Top ranks by votes alone over a chosen time window.

Do other instances show the same posts?

Not necessarily. Each instance carries its own mix of local and federated communities, and moderators can remove content on their own server.

Lemmy Hot Posts Screensaver

The Lemmy Hot Posts screensaver is a live feed of the hottest posts on a Lemmy instance right now — title, community and score. It's free, runs in your browser, and ESC exits.

How the Lemmy Hot Posts screensaver works

A background pipeline reads a Lemmy instance's public feed of hot local posts from Lemmy's own key-less REST API.

The saver scrolls them up the screen, each showing the post title, its community and score.

NSFW posts and communities are filtered out before the feed ever reaches the saver.

It refreshes every minute so the feed keeps pace with what's hot.

Lemmy, the federated Reddit alternative

Lemmy is free, open-source link-aggregation software whose communities live on independent servers called instances. Instances communicate over the ActivityPub protocol, so a user on one server can follow and post in a community hosted on another, and no single company runs the whole network.

A feed from one instance is a view of that server and the communities it carries or has federated with. Lemmy’s documented Hot ranking multiplies a logarithm of the score by a time-decay term, roughly log(max(1, 3 + score)) / (hours + 2)^1.8, so a newer post with a modest score can outrank an older, more popular one. A post’s score is its upvotes minus its downvotes.

Votes travel between servers as ActivityPub Like and Dislike activities, forwarded by the community’s home instance, so counts can differ slightly between servers. Titles are written by users and shown as submitted, and moderation rules differ from instance to instance.

A worked example

Posts rise from the bottom — a meme from !memes, a comic from !calvinandhobbes, a shitpost from !lemmyshitpost — the mix shifting as different threads gain votes across the instance.

Settings & tips

Scroll speed sets how fast posts move.
Accent recolours the highlights.
Run automation/run.py lemmyhot on your pipeline machine to refresh the feed.

Frequently asked questions

Is the feed live?: Yes. It comes from a Lemmy instance's public data, refreshed every minute by the pipeline, so it tracks what's hot now.
Is a key needed?: No. Lemmy's public REST API is fully key-less.
Does it show NSFW posts?: No — NSFW posts and communities are filtered out before the feed is built.
What is Lemmy?: A federated, Reddit-like link-aggregator and discussion platform made up of independently run instances.
Is it free?: Yes — free, no download, in your browser.
What does a post’s score represent?: In Lemmy’s ranking documentation, score is upvotes minus downvotes. Votes from other servers are delivered over federation, so the number can differ a little between instances.
Why is hot different from top?: Hot combines the score with the post’s age, using a gravity-style decay, so recent posts get a boost and old ones fade. Top ranks by votes alone over a chosen time window.
Do other instances show the same posts?: Not necessarily. Each instance carries its own mix of local and federated communities, and moderators can remove content on their own server.

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