Cat Type

Cat Type is a desktop companion for Windows, macOS, and Linux that makes a tiny animated cat appear while you type. Its paws follow the side of the keyboard you use, spacebar taps both paws, fast typing makes it excited, and it fades away after you stop.

Cat Type was inspired by Bongo Cat on Steam. I loved the idea of a tiny companion that reacts as you type and wanted to create my own take on it.

On Windows, Cat Type puts the companion beside the place where text is being inserted rather than on the taskbar. Its four-frame gray and ginger tabby sprite sheets are original artwork created for this project; it does not extract or redistribute Bongo Cat's game assets.

Install on Windows

Download and run Cat Type Setup.exe. The installer adds Cat Type to the Start Menu and can optionally add a desktop shortcut and launch it when you sign in.

You can also use the portable Cat Type.exe without installing it.

When Cat Type is running, its icon lives in the Windows system tray. Double click the tray icon to open Settings, or right click it to enable/disable the cat, open Settings, or quit.

Install on macOS

Download Cat-Type-macOS-arm64.dmg for Apple Silicon (M1 and newer), or Cat-Type-macOS-x64.dmg for an Intel Mac, then drag Cat Type to Applications. These community builds are not notarized, so the first launch may require right clicking the app and choosing Open. Allow Cat Type under System Settings > Privacy & Security > Input Monitoring when macOS asks.

Install on Linux

Download Cat-Type-Linux-x64.tar.gz for most PCs or Cat-Type-Linux-arm64.tar.gz for ARM64 devices, extract it, and run Cat Type. The overlay and global keyboard listener require X11 or XWayland. A system tray implementation such as AppIndicator is also recommended.

On Windows, Cat Type uses native accessibility APIs to place the cat beside the text caret when that geometry is available. If no usable caret can be detected, it falls back to the current mouse pointer. macOS and Linux currently use the mouse pointer directly.

Settings

Settings are saved for the current user and take effect immediately:

• Enable or pause the typing companion.
• Choose alternating tabbies, gray only, or ginger only.
• Change the cat size from 60% to 175%.
• Choose which corner of the caret the cat prefers.
• Adjust how long the cat remains and how quickly it fades.
• Start Cat Type automatically when you sign in.
• See how many keystrokes Cat Type has reacted to in the current session.

Press Ctrl+Alt+Q at any time to quit.

Automatic updates

Packaged Windows and Linux builds check GitHub for a newer stable release at startup. After a successful check, Cat Type waits at least 24 hours before checking automatically again. You can check at any time with Check for updates in Settings. Cat Type always asks for confirmation before it downloads or installs an available update; declining leaves the running copy unchanged.

Downloads come from the public Cat Type GitHub release and are accepted only when their SHA-256 digest matches the exact asset entry in the release's SHA256SUMS.txt. This detects corruption and asset mix-ups, but the checksum and download have the same GitHub release as their trust source. Current releases are not code-signed, and macOS builds are not notarized, so checksum verification is not a substitute for platform signing.

On Windows, a confirmed update starts the verified installer silently, shuts down Cat Type through its normal cleanup path, and relaunches the new version. When updating an older version that does not support graceful shutdown, the installer may force-close it; the in-app confirmation is the user's consent for that fallback.

On Linux, self-installation is limited to the frozen portable executable from the published tarball when its containing folder is writable. Cat Type stages the replacement beside the current executable, atomically keeps the old copy as a .previous backup, and rolls back and relaunches that backup if the new copy fails its startup health check. Installations in protected locations are left unchanged and show instructions to update manually. The replacement helper requires Linux /proc plus the standard sh, mv, sed, and awk command-line tools included by mainstream desktop distributions.

macOS updates remain manual, and apps run from source never self-install. Checking or downloading contacts GitHub's API and release download hosts; Cat Type does not include keyboard input or the session keystroke count in those requests.

Run from source

On Windows, from PowerShell:

.\start.ps1

The first run creates a local Python virtual environment and installs the runtime dependencies. After starting, type in Notepad, Word, a browser text box, or VS Code. The Settings window opens automatically on the first run.

On macOS or Linux:

python3 -m venv .venv
. .venv/bin/activate
python -m pip install -r requirements.txt
python cat_type.py

For diagnostics, run it in a visible terminal:

.\.venv\Scripts\python.exe .\cat_type.py --debug

Build

Create the Windows portable app and installer:

.\build.ps1

The outputs are dist\Cat Type.exe and, when Inno Setup 6 is installed, dist\Cat Type Setup.exe. They bundle Python, the runtime dependencies, the application icon, and both tabby sprite sets. Windows may warn about local builds because they are not code-signed.

On macOS or Linux:

python scripts/build_icon.py
python -m pip install -r requirements.txt -r requirements-build.txt
python -m PyInstaller --noconfirm --clean CatType.spec

The macOS output is dist/Cat Type.app; the Linux output is dist/Cat Type. Push a tag such as v1.0.8 to build every supported architecture and publish the assets together on a GitHub Release.

Privacy behavior

• The keyboard listener classifies each key as left, right, both, or an alternating fallback, then immediately discards the key itself.
• Cat Type retains only the paw action, activity time, and in-memory session total. It never reconstructs text, writes keystrokes to disk, or sends input over the network.
• On Windows, UI Automation's password-field flag is checked before showing the cat.
• The overlay is click-through and cannot take focus from the text field.

How caret tracking works on Windows

Cat Type combines two Windows mechanisms:

1. UI Automation TextPattern2.GetCaretRange for modern accessible text controls.
2. GetGUIThreadInfo and rcCaret as a fallback for traditional Win32 controls.

Some canvas-based editors, terminals, games, elevated applications, or other controls do not publish a usable caret. In those cases, Cat Type falls back to the current mouse pointer. Password fields detected through UI Automation stay hidden and never use the pointer fallback.

Tests

.\.venv\Scripts\python.exe -m unittest discover -s tests -v

See assets/SPRITES.md to edit or replace the sprite sheet.