you are on this one
Windows
Windows 10 and 11 · 64-bit- Portable .zip153 MBunzip it anywhere and run Toon.exe
Installs for you only, so there is no admin prompt. It is not code-signed yet, so SmartScreen asks first: More info → Run anyway.
v1.0.0 · free · no account
pets that live on your desktop
They walk about, sit, curl up and sleep, climb the walls, fly, and wander onto your other monitors. Pick one up and throw it across the screen. There is no window and no dock icon — just a paw in your tray.
Windows, macOS and Linux. Nothing to sign up for.
tuesday, 3pm. nobody is working.
the album
Seven live in the box
One of every kind you can make yourself: animals, a person, a vehicle, a mascot, something that flies and something that climbs. They all know the same ten animations, and they all notice each other.
point at a photo —
they will dance for you
+
and then one of your own
things to do
Pick one up. Throw it.
They are not a screensaver. Everything on screen can be prodded, dragged, thrown, whacked and set on something else.
- Hoverit stops and looks at your cursor
- Clickit says hello, or wakes up
- Drag and let goyou have thrown it; it bounces off the edges
- Right-clicka menu for that pet alone
- Panelsize, speed, add, remove, and who fights who
Your cursor becomes the tool
pick one in the panel, then hover a pet — try it here
Slapone open hand
Hammerless of an open handvs
Fights. Choose two from the panel and press Start the fight. They square up, trade half a dozen hits, and the winner dances.
the show-off
The spider actually swings
A climbing pet walks the whole edge of your screen: along the floor, up the wall, across the ceiling, down the other side. Then it jumps, shoots a web at the ceiling on the way down, and swings.
- a rope that sags and whips, worked out afresh every frame
- a pendulum it pumps at the bottom of the arc
- reels itself in on the way up, like taking in slack
- lets go at the top and throws itself into the next swing
Two to four swings, then it lands somewhere and walks off as if nothing happened.
your screen
12 points · 5 passesgravity 1200
your own
Make a pet out of anything
Toon draws its pets from a sprite sheet and a small manifest. You do not have to draw one: describe the character, let an image model do the picture, drop it back in.
idlewalkrunsitsleepgrabbedfallgreetdancehurt
8 × 10 cells, 128 px each — one row per animation
- 1
Describe it
A fluffy shiba inu puppy with a blue collar. Say what kind of thing it is - animal, humanoid, vehicle, mascot, flyer, climber - and the prompt writes itself.
you can edit it before you copy it
- 2
Paste it into any image model
Midjourney, DALL·E, Firefly, Stable Diffusion, Nano Banana - whichever you have. The prompt spells the grid out to the pixel, and a slider sets how much space to leave around every pose so tails and wings stay in their own cell.
already have the character? tick "I will upload a reference picture"
- 3
Drop the picture back in
The border is cut off, every pose is centred in its cell, and the frame lines are drawn over the top - one box per cell, the name of the animation on every row, a dashed line where the feet should land.
drag the sliders until the lines sit on what the model actually drew
- 4
Name it and press Add
Say whether it walks, climbs or flies. The pack installs itself and your pet walks onto the screen.
about five minutes, start to finish
the quiet part
It stays out of the way
A desktop pet that costs you a fan spinning up is not a pet, it is a problem. Toon redraws as rarely as the scene allows, and only the pixels that actually changed.
3frames a second
a pet that is asleep
30frames a second
one walking about
0frames a second
nothing moving at all
One transparent, click-through window per monitor, with every pet drawn into a single canvas. Drag one and it goes up to sixty; leave the room and it stops painting altogether. On battery it quietly drops a notch.
No account, no telemetry, no updates phoning home. Toon never opens a network connection - it reads its own files and that is the lot.
free, for good
Take them home
One download and they are yours. No account, no licence key, no trial that runs out, nothing to sign up for.
version 1.0.0free to useno telemetry
you are on this one
macOS
macOS 11+ · Apple silicon and Intel- Intel build~150 MBfor Macs from before 2020
Unzip and drag Toon.app to Applications. It has no Dock icon - look in the menu bar.
you are on this one
Linux
Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch…- .rpm package~150 MBFedora, openSUSE
- Plain .zip~150 MBany distribution, nothing to install
Needs a compositing window manager for the transparent overlay - X11 or a Wayland session with XWayland.
you are on a phone — Toon needs a desktop. Send yourself this link.
The other two are on the way
Every installer has to be built on the kind of machine it runs on, so the Mac and Linux builds follow the Windows one. Same pets, same panel, same everything else.