Everyone walks differently
The bird hops with its feet together. The pig waddles. The elephant takes its time. You can tell who it is from across the room.
Hold the mouse down and wipe the glass
someone is waiting in there
Free · Windows & macOS
lives on your desktop · wanders off on its own · mails you postcards
Windows 10/11 · macOS 12+ · no account, no paywall
It actually lives there
A transparent window that lets your clicks straight through — so it can nap on your taskbar without once getting in the way. Every animal walks differently, and not one of them sits still for long.
The bird hops with its feet together. The pig waddles. The elephant takes its time. You can tell who it is from across the room.
An ear flicks. The tail swings. It shifts its weight, looks off at something, looks back. Glance away and it has already moved.
It wakes up properly — a long stretch, then a yawn. Comes out of the house and shakes itself off. Sneezes after digging.
Small moves that stack on top of whatever it is already doing — so yes, it can shake its head while sitting down.
Drops it right beside your cursor, then looks up and waits. Take too long and it starts digging at the floor to hurry you along.
Press the cursor into its side and scrub — that is a tickle. Just wave nearby instead and it will pounce on you.
Sleepy after lunch. Ready for bed late. And if it falls all the way asleep, it dreams.
Double-click to talk to it. It knows what it owns, where it has been, and what you told it last week.
The best part
Do not panic — it packed. Somewhere out there it is picking a city, and in a day or two something is going to land in the mailbox beside its house.
That is the whole ritual. A thirsty pet never leaves home.
A big heart floats up, and it bolts straight off the edge of your screen.
Flies in from off-screen, drops into the mailbox, and the little red flag springs up.
A souvenir, or a snack it found out there. Then it sleeps for a whole day — as anyone would.
Every city painted by hand
And plenty of places it has not found yet
a few of the places it can end up
Double-click the little house
A house sits in the corner of your screen. It walks home on its own, lets itself in, and some evenings climbs up onto the roof. Double-click and you are inside — and so is it, wandering about on the floor.
Nothing floats on top of the room. Every way in is something drawn in the picture.
No levels. No streaks. No progress bars.
It comes home with something after almost every trip — a hat, a scarf, a pine cone, a snack you have never seen before. Nothing expires, nothing is ever due, and nothing nags you about it.
Hats, glasses, scarves. It puts the seasonal ones on by itself when the day comes round.
A paper plane that glides. A balloon it has to jump for. A ball it will not stop bringing back.
Trade up, string lights along the eaves, stand a mailbox out front.
Souvenirs, snacks, postcards. The ones it has not found yet come with a rumour attached.
Sell a spare souvenir, let the coins pile up, and one day somebody new moves in.
There are more of them. You will meet them when it does.
Free, and staying free
No trial. No account. Nothing locked away behind a payment. Download it once and it is yours.
Windows 10/11 (100 MB) · macOS 11+ (190 MB)
Windows — the installer is not code-signed, so SmartScreen shows “Windows protected your PC”. Click More info, then Run anyway. That warning is about the missing signature, not about anything found inside the file.
macOS — open the .dmg and drag Deskmate to Applications. It is signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple, so it just opens. It lives in the menu bar, not the Dock.