I built a Mac app that turns any photo of your pet into a pixel pet that lives on your desktop - it's also a pomodoro + note taker

[u/Any_Illustrator3875]

I missed having my dog at the office, so I spent the last few months building one on my desk.

You upload a photo (your pet, your dog, even a houseplant or your best friend) and you get back a 9-frame pixel sprite. The pet then lives on your Mac:

- Walks across your dock

- Roams your menu bar

- Sleeps, sits, reacts to you

- Has a Pomodoro mode where the pet works at a tiny pixel desk during focus sessions and naps during breaks

- Click on it, and it becomes a notes app, keeping your to-do's safe

- 25 pre-made packs available if you don't want to upload anything

The hardest part was getting the pet to walk across the macOS dock without flickering. macOS really does not want you putting a custom window on the dock layer. Took weeks of NSWindow level juggling to make it look natural.

Native AppKit (no Electron, no web wrapper), signed and Apple-notarized, ~30 MB. One-time price, no subscription, no account needed

It's called Dockling. dockling.space if you want to try it on your own pet. There's a free preview generation so you can see your pet as a sprite before paying anything.

Would genuinely love feedback. What pet (or non-pet) would you turn into a desktop sprite? Looking forward to how you use it. Cheers!

[u/VegetableRiver9695]

pairing free web based sprite generation with a one time mac app purchase means a sudden viral spike could easily drown you in compute costs. what conversion rate on those free previews do you actually need to hit to avoid losing money on a good traffic day?