BitTherapy (Desktop Pets)

This is the source code of my macOS app BitTherapy, which brings Desktop Pets to macOS! 🚀

Like the app? Join our Discord!

🎮 Latest Releases & Supported System

OS	Store	Binaries	Build from Source
macOS	App Store	n/a	See instructions
Windows (Beta)	Some day!	Latest Beta	See instructions

The Windows port of the app has been written with C#/WinForms from scratch and it's still missing quite a lot of features, but will get there eventually. It's currently in Beta and has only been tested on Windows 11 amd64.

🤔 What's a Desktop Pet?

It's just a cute little pet or animal that lives in your computer.

The most popular one was probably the eSheep for Windows 95.

Hope you like them too!

🔥 Screenshots (macOS)

🎨 Create custom pets

Starting from version 2.20 you can now create custom pets, please check the documentation.

You do not need any programming knowledge or dev tools to create your own pets, just design your characters and follow the instructions, good luck!

🙏 Contribute

Contributors get a shout out in the app, just saying... 😏

If you wish to improve support for your language, join our Discord and let us know!

🔔 Interoperability

Since version 2.48 you can use DistributedNotificationCenter to send basic commands to your pets.

Here's the payload:

{
    "subject": "sloth",
    "action": "eat",
    "x": 100,
    "y": 100
}

• x and y are optional
• subject is the id of a species
• action the id of an animation You can look up species and their animations here.

Sample Python script to send out notifications:

from Foundation import NSDistributedNotificationCenter, NSDictionary

def send_notification():
    notification_name = "it.curzel.pets.Api"
    message = {...}
    user_info = NSDictionary.dictionaryWithDictionary_(message)
    center = NSDistributedNotificationCenter.defaultCenter()
    center.postNotificationName_object_userInfo_deliverImmediately_(
        notification_name, None, user_info, True
    )

if __name__ == "__main__":
    send_notification()

🛠️ Build from Source

macOS

1. Download and setup Xcode
2. Open the Sources/swift/BitTherapy.xcworkspace
3. Run

Windows

1. Download and setup Visual Studio 2022
2. Open the Sources/windows/BitTherapy.sln
3. Run

FAQ

Linux Support?

The app works by creating a transparent full screen window, which displays a bunch of sprites.

The app relies on the fact that both macOS and Windows discards events (such as mouse clicks) that happen on a completely trasparent porting of the window. This way, the app is unable to track events and doens't get in the way of you using other apps.

• Can this work on Linux? Sure
• Have you tried Wine? Not yet (chances of success do seem quite low)
• Do I want to figure out how to make this work on X or Wayland? Nope....

Sorry!

About me

I have a YouTube Channel which has been gathering lots of dust lately.