PokéPets
Delete Immediately
- Select a file in Finder
- Press ⌥⌘⌫
- Gone. Not in the Trash
Nothing to put back.
Native macOS · Menu bar app · Fan project
Your desktop, with company.
PokéPets puts a Pokémon on your Mac. It walks the Dock, climbs the files on your desktop, gets hungry, grows up and evolves. Ask nicely and it deletes things for you, into the Trash, with an attack.
- 2
- lines to raise
- 0
- dependencies
- Trash
- never erase
A sample desktop
Pick a Pokémon, then ask it for something. Same sprites and the same move list as the app. Everything is unlocked here; in the app, moves come with levels.
Gengar · out on the desktop
Gengar is hanging about
Pichu line
Gastly line
?
?
?
?
Its own moves · Ghost / Poison
Everyday
Pretend things happen to the Mac
From a terminal, a git hook or an agent
$ make test && pokepets celebrate || pokepets fail(press a button to run it)
Files on the sample desktop
Transcript (everything it did and said)
The shortcut you already use
Deleting a file, with a safety net.
In Finder, ⌥⌘⌫ is Delete Immediately. No Trash, no undo. PokéPets takes over that one shortcut (only while Finder is in front) so the same keys do something better.
Zapped, then Trashed
- Select a file in Finder
- Press ⌥⌘⌫, or ⌥-drag it onto the Pokémon
- Pikachu Thunderbolts it. Gengar swallows it whole
- It lands in the Trash. You can still put it back
Meet the party
Two lines to raise. Four more on the way.
You raise one line at a time. Every Pokémon starts as an Egg in the menu bar dial. Click it and it hatches; the one already out goes back into its ball.
The Pichu line Electric
- Eggmenu bar dial
- Ability
- Lightning Rod soaks up the charger. Alolan Raichu has Surge Surfer and surfs fast laps while you charge.
- Climbs
- Hops the Dock and desktop files. With Quick Attack it leaps big heights, trailing sparks.
- Deletes with
- Thunder Shock, then Thunderbolt. Bolt from its body to the file's icon.
- Odd one out
- Alolan Raichu rides its tail on psychic power: it never falls, it drifts.
The Gastly line Ghost / Poison
- Eggmenu bar dial
- Ability
- Levitate. It is never stuck to the floor: it flies anywhere on your screen and never falls when you drop it.
- Haunts
- Sinks into your front window and peeks out, licks your screen, pops its head up near your cursor.
- Deletes with
- Shadow Ball. It charges one, throws it, and the file is sucked in. The wisp left over floats back to be eaten.
- After dark
- From 7 pm to 6 am, or whenever your Mac is in dark mode: a purple glow and extra mischief.
TyphlosionFire · planned
PidgeotFlying · planned
AlakazamPsychic · planned
LaprasWater · planned
Gengar, up to no good
Ask for the shadow clones.
Each of these is a real routine from the app, played here with the app's sprites and its own pixel effects. Hit one and Gengar goes and does it on the sample desktop above.
Day to day
What they get up to while you work.
They roam
Along the bottom of the screen, up onto the Dock, across the icons on your desktop. They come over when your cursor does, and stay behind full-screen windows, videos and YouTube. The overlay is click-through: it only catches the mouse when you are actually over a Pokémon.
They need things
Hungry about every half hour; drag a berry onto it. Real EXP curves from Lv 1 to 100, friendship from 0 to 255, 25 natures, a 1 in 4096 shiny roll. Leave it alone for 20 minutes and it sulks. Drop it from a height and it cries.
They notice your Mac
Charger, battery, heat, Wi-Fi, your camera, music, and you stepping away for five minutes. At 5% battery it faints until you plug in. Camera on, it goes back in its ball for your call.
They tidy up
The Downloads guard spots files over 500 MB, duplicate copies and installers you are done with, then offers Delete or Keep right in the notification. Once per file, and it never touches anything without a yes.
You stay in charge
It asks. You decide.
A pet that evolves or deletes things on its own would be a worse pet. Two places where it waits for you:
Evolving
- Eggwaiting in the dial
- Hatcheswhen you click it
- GrowsEXP from your company, not battles
- Asks to evolvea notification: Evolve or Not Now
- Evolvesor asks again next level
Deleting
- On the desktopyou select it
- You ask⌥⌘⌫ or ⌥-drag, never on its own
- ZappedThunderbolt or Shadow Ball
- In the Trashnever erased
- Put backwhenever you like
- It never erases. Every delete goes to the Trash, including the Downloads guard's.
- It never evolves unasked. Not Now is always an answer.
- It makes no network requests. No account, no analytics. Everything lives in your Mac's own settings.
- It leaves when you ask. Every permission is optional, and Settings has a switch for every behaviour.
Using it · scripting it · hacking on it
Same app, three ways in.
| Do this | To get this |
|---|---|
| Click the Poké Ball in the menu bar | Open the party dial: send out or recall, check stats, grab berries and evolution items. Right-click for Settings and Quit. |
| Drag a berry onto your Pokémon | Feed it. Each one has a favourite and a berry it dislikes. |
| Hover over it | Pet it. Hearts, and friendship if it is warming to you. Shy natures keep their distance at first. |
| Drag it about, swing it, let go | Pick it up, make it dizzy, drop it. |
| Select files in Finder, press ⌥⌘⌫ | It deletes them into the Trash, with a move. |
| Drag a Thunder Stone or Linking Cord onto it | Evolve it, once it is ready. |
PokéPets answers to a URL scheme, so a script, a git hook or an AI agent can make your Pokémon react. bin/pokepets is a one-line wrapper around open -g pokepets://….
make && bin/pokepets celebrate || bin/pokepets fail| Command | What happens | Try it |
|---|---|---|
pokepets celebrate | Build passed: joyous, a Thunder Shock or happy pose | |
pokepets fail | Build failed: it faints for a few seconds | |
pokepets done | A long job or an agent finished: hearts | |
pokepets hello | Just says hi | |
pokepets focus / unfocus | Goes quiet and sleeps / wakes up. Wire it to a Focus mode with a Shortcuts automation. | app only |
About 8,000 lines of Swift in 19 files, no third-party dependencies. One shared engine; a species is a small subclass with its sprites, moves, ability and evolution rules.
bin/try fly gengar # relaunch running one demobin/try <demo> <who>relaunches the app running one routine (dock,files,levelup,phase,clone,snatch…) so you do not wait for it to decide to.- Settings › Why? shows the brain: its needs, and the live score of every option it is weighing.
- Settings › Animations plays every SpriteCollab animation in all eight directions, each with an In routine switch.
bin/import-sprites.swiftimports a Pokémon and its shiny from PMD SpriteCollab and adds the artists to the credits.
There is no per-frame loop: the walk cycle is a keyframe animation over the sprite sheet, movement is a Core Animation move, and the app wakes only to decide. (This page works the same way, with the Web Animations API.)
Price: free · not for sale
Install it in one line.
Paste it into Terminal. It downloads PokéPets, checks the file against its published SHA-256, copies it into Applications and opens it. Needs macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later; Apple silicon and Intel Macs both work.
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/YashTygi/PokePets/main/docs/install.sh | sh
What it does
- Downloads
PokePets.dmgand its checksum from this repository. - Stops if the SHA-256 doesn't match. Nothing is installed.
- Copies
PokePets.appinto/Applications(into~/Applicationsif that isn't writable). An older copy is replaced; your Pokémon are kept. - Clears macOS's "downloaded from the internet" mark, so there is no warning, and opens it.
No sudo, no shell or login-item edits. It is about 80 lines: read it first.
Why there is no warning
macOS stops anything a browser downloads that Apple hasn't notarized (notarizing costs $99 a year, and PokéPets is free). A file fetched with curl never gets that mark. The warning is the only thing skipped; the checksum is the check that remains.
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/YashTygi/PokePets/main/docs/uninstall.sh | shMoves the app to the Trash and keeps your Pokémon. Add -s -- --purge after sh to remove them too.
Download PokePets.dmg
Version 1.0 · about 7 MB · macOS 14+ · Apple silicon and Intel · SHA-256
macOS will stop it once. Here is the way through.
PokéPets isn't notarized by Apple, so the first time you open something you downloaded in a browser, macOS says it can't verify it. That is expected. It takes about 30 seconds.
-
Open PokePets.dmg. macOS shows this. Click Done, not Move to Bin (it says Move to Trash on a US-English Mac).
“PokePets.dmg” Not Opened
Apple could not verify “PokePets.dmg” is free of malware that may harm your Mac or compromise your privacy.
DoneMove to Bin -
Open Apple menu → System Settings → Privacy & Security. Scroll down to Security and click Open Anyway, then enter your Mac password or use Touch ID.
“PokePets.dmg” was blocked to protect your Mac.Open Anyway
- macOS asks one last time. Click Open (or Open Anyway). Never Move to Bin.
- Drag PokePets into Applications and open it. If macOS stops the app itself the same way, repeat steps 2 and 3 once. After that it opens normally.
Prefer Terminal? xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/PokePets.app clears the mark on the app, or use the one-line install, which never gets it.
-
Get the code
git clone https://github.com/YashTygi/PokePets.git cd PokePets open PokePets.xcodeproj -
Pick your team, press ⌘R
In Xcode, select the PokePets target, open Signing & Capabilities and choose your own Team (a free personal one is enough). It needs Xcode 16 or later. The build lands in
~/Applications/PokePets.appand launches. -
Say hello
A short welcome guide sets the house rules and asks for each permission one at a time. Then click the Poké Ball in the menu bar and click the Egg.
What it asks of your Mac
Every permission is optional, and each one is asked for once, with the reason, by the welcome guide.
| Permission | What it is for | If you say no |
|---|---|---|
| Notifications | Level-ups, hunger, evolution prompts, the Downloads guard | They stay quiet; captions still show |
| Automation → Finder | Finds your desktop files so it can climb them | No file climbing |
| Automation → your browser | Notices a YouTube video so it stays out of the way | It will not hide for YouTube in that browser |
| Accessibility | Aims the Thunderbolt at the file's exact icon | Files still go to the Trash, aimed less precisely |
| Files & Folders → Downloads | The Downloads guard | The guard stays off |
Questions
The honest answers.
Can it delete something I wanted to keep?
It only deletes what you point it at (select files in Finder and press ⌥⌘⌫, or ⌥-drop them on it) or what you say yes to in a Downloads guard notification. Every delete goes to the Trash, never erased, so you can put it back. While the delete move is on, PokéPets takes over only the ⌥⌘⌫ shortcut, and only while Finder is in front. You can switch the move off in Settings.
Why does it want Accessibility?
Only to see where Finder draws a file's icon, so the Thunderbolt or Shadow Ball lands on it. Without it, deleting still works, just aimed less precisely. It is optional and the app explains it before asking.
Will it eat my battery?
It is built not to: no per-frame loop, one see-through window, sensors that wake it only when something changes (the charger, Wi-Fi, heat, a file landing in Downloads). Two small timers do run: an idle check every 20 seconds, and, while it is allowed to walk over your apps, a look every 2 seconds at whether the front app is full screen. I have not published CPU or memory measurements yet, so I am not going to put a number on it.
Does it work on more than one display?
Not yet. Today the Pokémon live on your main display.
Where is the download?
Use the one-line Terminal install, or download PokePets.dmg (about 7 MB, Apple silicon and Intel). Both are in this repository, and the script checks the DMG's SHA-256 before it installs anything. Details are in Install.
Why does macOS say it can't verify PokéPets?
Apple only waves through apps it has notarized, and notarizing needs a paid developer account ($99 a year). PokéPets is free, so a DMG you download in a browser is stopped once. Click Done (not Move to Bin), then open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll to Security and click Open Anyway. The steps are on the DMG tab. The one-line install avoids the prompt, because curl downloads aren't marked.
Is it safe to paste that into Terminal?
It is a sensible thing to ask. install.sh is short enough to read in a couple of minutes. It downloads two files from this repository, refuses to continue unless the SHA-256 matches, copies the app to Applications, clears macOS's downloaded-from-the-internet mark from that copy, and opens it. It never uses sudo and doesn't touch your shell settings. The app itself is open source in the same repository, so you can build it yourself instead.
How do I uninstall it?
Paste curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/YashTygi/PokePets/main/docs/uninstall.sh | sh into Terminal. It quits PokéPets and moves the app to the Trash, and keeps your Pokémon so a reinstall brings them back. Add -s -- --purge after sh to remove their save and settings and reset the permissions you gave it. Or just drag PokePets from Applications to the Trash.
When do Typhlosion, Pidgeot, Alakazam and Lapras arrive?
They already have slots in the party screen and are planned, but nothing is built. The two lines here are finished enough to live with, and I would rather get them right first.
Does it phone home?
No. The app makes no network requests, has no account and no analytics. The Pokémon data (learnsets, growth rates, natures, Pokédex text) is baked in, and your party is saved in your Mac's own settings.
Is this official?
No. Pokémon and its characters belong to Nintendo, Creatures Inc. and GAME FREAK inc. PokéPets is an unofficial, non-commercial fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by them, and it is not for sale. Some of the sprites are CC BY-NC 4.0, so keep it that way if you fork it.
Is the sample above the real app?
It is the real sprites, move lists, lines and pixel effects, rebuilt for the browser so you can poke at them. The app itself runs on your actual desktop, with real files and real sensors. The charger, battery and Wi-Fi in the sample are pretend.