If you’ve ever wanted to go back in time and relive the days of the personal computer before it had completely taken over all of our lives, you can now do so with a brilliant little app. On Thursday, Slack developer Alex Rieseberg shared a project on GitHub which condenses the entirety of the Windows 95 experience into a single app that run on modern versions of Windows, macOS, and even Linux. You can download it for free right over here.
Virtually everything you remember about Windows 95 is here, from the outdated, blocky user interface to the standard Start menu programs that used to ship with every Windows 95 machine. That includes accessories such as Paint and WordPad, as well as games like FreeCell, Solitaire, and the ever-popular Minesweeper.
Built with Electron, the Windows version of the free app weighs in at just 129MB and ran smoothly on my Dell XPS 13. Rieseberg didn’t share any minimum specifications, but as long as you have a little bit of horsepower, you should be able to run the app without a hitch. Of course, I’m not sure why you would need to run Windows 95 in a separate window for more than a few minutes for nostalgia’s sake anyway, but it shouldn’t slow you down.
Unfortunately, not every program that Rieseberg included in the package works. For example, you can open Internet Explorer, but you can’t actually get it to load any pages, as the app won’t connect to the internet. So while you might not get much use out of it, the Windows 95 app is a fun diversion on a slow summer Thursday.
