A companion that lives on your taskbar and actually needs you. Feed it, play with it, teach it tricks — and watch it level up over weeks. It still reacts to your battery, the weather and your downloads while it wanders.
No installer · One 36 MB file · Your pet’s progress saves automatically
2.0 gave your pet needs and a memory. 2.1 fixes the things that were only pretending to work.
The ball falls, bounces off the floor and walls, rolls to a stop — and your pet runs it down and bats it away again. The laser dot darts out of reach the moment your pet closes in, and after a good chase it finally lets itself be caught.
Before this, every toy in the menu played the same three lines. Nothing appeared on screen and your pet never moved toward anything.
All four used to replay something else — asking your pet to dance made it walk on the spot, and feeding it made it jump rather than eat. They are real animations now, on every character, including ones you import yourself.
Sprites were being magnified by fractional amounts, so some pixels came out one screen pixel wide and their neighbours two. That is what made the outlines look ragged. Sizes now snap to whole zoom factors.
The hint text under every control was too faint, and on the light theme some accent colours made headings almost invisible. Every colour combination now meets the WCAG AA contrast standard.
48 MB down to 36 MB, by dropping the parts of Qt the app never loads — and the on-screen effects no longer reserve a buffer the size of your whole desktop.
v1 was a mascot that wandered your taskbar. v2 gives it needs, a memory, and thirty levels of things to unlock — so there’s a reason to come back tomorrow.
Your pet’s needs run on the real clock — even while the app is closed. Come back in the morning and it’s genuinely hungry. Feed it, let it nap, give it attention.
Go away for a weekend and it forgives you: offline decay is capped, and affection never bottoms out on its own. It misses you, it doesn’t resent you.
Everything you do together earns XP. Levels unlock new food, toys, hats, mini-games and the ability to chat with it. Daily visits build a streak bonus.
Rock paper scissors, guess the number, higher or lower, and a reaction test. Type to your pet and it answers — tell it to sit, spin or play dead and it actually does.
Gone are the seven cramped tabs. Pick a character from a real grid, watch a live preview animate as you drag the size slider, and retint the whole app with one click. No OK button — nothing to commit.
One click retints every window — settings, menus, speech bubbles, notes and timers.
Your pet actually lives on your screen — it gets hungry, learns tricks, reacts to your PC, and gets moody if you ignore it.
Hunger, energy and affection run on the real clock — even while the app is closed. Feed it, let it sleep, and it thrives. Ignore it and it will tell you about it.
XP from everything you do together. Levels unlock food, toys, hats, mini-games and chat.
Rock paper scissors, guess the number, higher or lower, and a reaction test — winner takes the XP.
Type to your pet and it answers in character. Tell it to sit, spin or play dead and it actually does.
Eight accents across four backgrounds, including a light mode. One click retints every window.
Set your city and the pet checks real weather. On rainy days it hides under an umbrella. Sunny? It dances. Works with any city worldwide.
Mood changes based on how you treat it — saved between sessions. Ignore it for too long and it sulks.
The pet detects open app windows and hops onto their top edge. Right-click → Sit on window.
Balloon, rocket, portal, moonwalk, freeze, cursor steal — trigger them from the right-click menu any time.
Reacts to low battery, downloads finishing, File Explorer opening, idle time, and more — automatically.
Left-click to pat · Double-click to hear it talk · Drag to move it anywhere · Release fast to fling it · Shake it for a surprise reaction.
Add your own messages in Settings → Speech. The pet mixes them with its built-in lines.
Bows, caps, shades, top hats and crowns — every character can wear every item. Unlocked by levelling up.
Balanced, playful, lazy, clingy or shy — changes how much it wanders, naps and follows your cursor.
Spawn more than one pet — they interact with each other on the taskbar.
Snow in winter, cherry blossoms in spring, autumn leaves in fall — automatic based on your system date.
Living on your taskbar, checking in on it, and everything one right-click away.
Download any character pack free. Import via Settings → Characters → Add Character. Each pack includes sprites, sounds, and 50 unique speech lines.
.zip.Click the download button and save DesktopPet.exe anywhere you like — your Desktop or Downloads folder is fine.
Double-click to install. If Windows warns you, click More info → Run anyway.
Your pet appears on the taskbar and auto-starts every time you boot Windows.
No. Download 2.1, put it where the old one was, and run it. Your name, character, custom lines and settings are read and upgraded automatically. The care loop starts at level 1, because v1 had no levels to carry over.
No accounts, no analytics, no telemetry. Everything your pet knows lives in a settings.json file next to the app. It makes exactly two kinds of outbound request, both optional and both switchable off in Settings: the weather lookup, and a once-a-day check for a newer version.
Your pet gets hungry, but not dramatically — offline decay is capped at 16 hours no matter how long you were away, and affection never falls below a floor on its own. It greets you when you come back, and your level, XP and streak record are untouched.
The current release is free to download and use, with no ads and no account.
No. The animation is pre-rendered rather than drawn each frame, so it barely touches the CPU, and it hides itself completely during full-screen games and video. It is designed to be invisible in the background.
No. Windows shows this warning for any new app that hasn't been downloaded by thousands of people yet. Click More info → Run anyway. The app is open-source and contains no malware.
Right-click the pet → Settings → System → Uninstall. That removes it from Windows startup and clears its saved data. Then delete the folder — there is no installer, so it never appears in Windows' apps list.
Yes. Pack your sprite frames into a .zip (see the README for the folder structure) and import it via Settings → Characters → Add Character.
Not yet — currently Windows 10 and 11 only. Other platforms may come later.
Email us at Support@desktop-pet.online — we usually reply within 24 hours.
Works on Windows 10 & 11 · No installer · No account needed
Download for Windows · v2.1.0DesktopPet.exe · 36 MB · Windows 10 & 11 · No installer