A desktop pet for Windows

Little characters that live on your screen, walk along the taskbar and hang off your windows. And know when to disappear.

What is a desktop pet?

It’s a small program that brings an animated character to life on top of your windows. It wanders around, falls, climbs, and reacts to what’s happening on screen. The idea goes back a long way: Neko, the cat that chases your cursor, has been around since the late 1980s; a white sheep roamed desktops in the 1990s; and in 2020, Desktop Goose let a mischievous goose loose on thousands of screens. You’ll also hear “desktop buddy” or “desktop mascot”.

Why Shimeji

Shimeji were born in Japan in 2009 (their story). Three things set them apart: they multiply, they play with your real windows, climbing them, sitting on their edges and sometimes throwing them across the screen, and anyone can draw one. The community has built a huge library of them.

A desktop pet that doesn’t get in the way

The trouble with desktop pets is that they end up being annoying: they walk in front of what you’re reading and stay put during a movie. Shimeji Desktop Reloaded fixes that:

the Shimeji only arrive when you step away from a screen, after the time you choose;
they leave as soon as you come back;
they don’t come to a screen where a video is playing, or during a fullscreen game;
Pause for an hour, from the icon next to the clock, keeps them away during a call or a presentation.

While they’re away, the app only keeps an eye on activity on your screens, which barely slows your PC down.

Seven characters, and as many as you like

The original Shimeji, its all-black twin KuroShimeji and five colored versions come with the app. You can add more from the community library and choose who’s allowed to come: see Characters.