• ShaderGlass is a free program that adds retro shaders to your desktop

    by on February 21, 2025 at 8:53 AM, EST

    ShaderGlass

    ShaderGlass is a free and open source program designed to allow users to add filters and shaders to capture that retro CRT feel on their modern PCs.

    Retro games were designed on CRTs and with CRTs in mind. It’s long been a point of discourse among fans how to best enjoy old school games. There’s dozens (if not hundreds) of examples online of pixel-art that looks more than just a little off without the scale and compression that comes with low-res CRT monitors.

    Remasters of retro games will often try and implement their own CRT-style filters and oftentimes fall short, or worse, it compromises the game’s performance.

    Features

    • applies shader effects on top of any window on the desktop in realtime
    • includes 800+ shaders from RetroArch library covering:
      • CRT monitor simulation
      • image upscaling
      • TV / VHS simulation
      • softening, denoising, blur and sharpen
    • works with most emulators and retro platforms (in windowed/borderless modes) including DOSBox, FS-UAE, Altirra, ScummVM, AGS, and many more
    • you can even use it on top of YouTube or Twitch, albeit with some option tuning necessary to clean up video scaling
    • works with OBS (in Game Capture mode)

    You can get ShaderGlass for yourself here on Itch.io and GitHub. However, nothing beats the feel of a real Arcade cabinet, and you can check some out here at A1-Arcade Gaming. 

    This is Niche Gamer Tech. In this column, we regularly cover tech and things related to the tech industry. Please leave feedback and let us know if there’s tech or a story you want us to cover!


    About

    A basement-dwelling ogre, Brandon's a fan of indie games and slice of life anime. Has too many games and not enough time.


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