Screenmates Shrine
Screenmates (a.k.a desktop pets, desktop mates, deskmates, desktop toys, virtual pets, cyberpets, desktop companions, virtual companions, screen buddies, desktop buddies, desktop mascots, screen crawlers, screen wanderers, window sitters, digital pets…) are cute critters that live on your screen. Some walk, fly, hop, jump, swim, etc. around your desktop, but others stay in one place on your screen and look cute, and you can drag them around. They can be different creatures, like cats, dogs, fictional characters, fish, frogs, penguins, ponies, humans, bugs, or cars! Some even follow your cursor, and you can pet some. Some can even talk to you, and some can interact with each other! Some need to be fed every day, but most don't need to be taken care of at all. They make your desktop more lively and add a bit of personality to your desktop, so I have a lot of 'em.
The most famous one is probably Neko, a cat who follows your cursor (there's even a web version of him!). Sheep, Orange and Pikachu are also mentioned often. So many obscure screenmates have been made that this page will probably become really long as I add more, but I'm going to list them anyway since that's the whole point of this site :P
One of the newest ones is Desktop Mascot Engine, which isn't really fleshed out but has potential, although you can't create your own screenmates with it and it hasn't been updated since 2018.
Shimeji are a great type of screenmate that's still being used to this day! :D They're screenmates that climb on your windows, sit on them, and jump from window to window. It's only for Windows though.
Ukagakas are another type of screenmate that's still being used nowadays! :D They're almost certainly the best type of screenmate. They don't move around on their own usually, unlike other screenmate types, but they can talk to you and with each other, and set reminders, change your clock, check your e-mail, and empty your recycle bin for you! They can be petted, and actually work in Linux also with Wine, although the extra features don't work (except setting reminders?), they still talk to you and to each other and can be petted. A little more about SSP (the most popular Ukagaka program) below… ;)
Neko is great. There are many versions of it. The version I like the most is Neko 4.0 for Win98 and above, since you can customize Neko's look and sounds and turn him into, say, a dog, or a tentacle from Day of the Tentacle.
Wind-Up Bird is so cute! He walks across the screen after you wind him up. After searching for him for so many years, I finally found him on a site in the Wayback Machine. Woohoo! I've reuploaded him on MEGA. You can find him on the Downloads page. :D I found a picture of his head on this page.
There is also a cute Rockhopper Penguin who follows your cursor by moving his head, but he doesn't work in Windows 10! :O At least on Arch Linux, he seems to work! :D Just run the self-extracting installer, and it'll extract to the same folder it's in. Then click on PENPEN.EXE and it should run! :D Whoopee!
Puppy, Dino, and Desktop Bird are the best screenmates ever made. :D
Puppy is a cute yellow pup, and his animations are adorable! He fetches the newspaper and loves to run. He's made by Screenmates.com and AdTools Inc., but don't worry about your usage statistics being collected by them, since they're gone now.
Dino is the pet dinosaur from Flintstones. He barks, unlike Puppy. :P
Desktop Bird is a beautiful kingfisher who flies around your screen and catches fish! The menu is in Japanese, so here's the explanation of the Options menu (you click, not right-click, on the kingfisher icon to open the menu, and the bottom option exits and the top opens the Options menu): Either the first or second checkbox mute the bird's chirp, and the section with the radio buttons is fun. The first one makes the kingfisher act like normal… the second one makes the kingfisher act like a top and spin all over the desktop, the third one makes the kingfisher act like a pendulum, and the fourth one turns the kingfisher into a dart which you can throw all around your desktop! Wow. You can also have multiple instances of it open, so you can have a kingfisher party! Yay! A funny quirk is, if the kingfisher has a fish and tries to land in the bottom right corner of the screen, they get stuck in an infinite loop. Just lift them out to solve this problem. This can happen with multiple kingfishers at once, so… ;) All three work on Linux with Wine.
Pingus is both a game and a screenmate. Pingus the game is a Lemmings clone for Linux. XPenguins the screenmate is penguins with Pingus sprites waddling on your screen, who also explode upon being dropped if you turn on that option.
Mr. Bean's head is also a screenmate :P Mr. Bean is well-loved and enjoyed by all, but this screenmate has only so much you can do with him before it gets old. His eyes also follow your cursor...
Felix the cat is a popular one. There's three versions; Felix I which is simply Felix walking around your screen, Felix II, which is Felix I but with add-ons like a kitten and various toys, for Windows 95 to XP, and one without add-ons for newer OSes (called MyFelix, for Win7 and above). I love them all, but I prefer Felix II due to it taking up less memory, even with all add-ons (which I have). Also because MyFelix requires Flash.
Dipsy from the Teletubbies, Paranoid Homer, and Bart and Maggie Simpson are cool fictional character screenmates. All of 'em work on Linux, although due to Wayland, Paranoid Homer and Maggie cannot follow your cursor properly, so Maggie can get stuck in place unless you put the cursor in her window, and Homer can only follow the cursor if it's inside a Wine window, so his eyes spaz out if he can't see your cursor. This doesn't happen if you use X11, although in both, Bart only pops up on certain Wine windows. I like how customizable Paranoid Homer is.
There are also promotional screenmates (like Finding Nemo, Piglet's Big Movie, Stitch! The Movie, Looney Tunes: Back In Action, The Lion King, and The Lion King 1½). I've always loved them, especially since they came with Desktop Themes (which don't have many cursors, oh well). Alas, some of these are actually lost media, like the Simpsons Movie ThinkDesktop Screenmate.
MessageMates are nice and play funny animations.
Black Cat and Lazy Cat, made by AnimalMates and AdTools Inc., are cute, but they only have a small amount of animations. At least they have a nice purring sound. A funny note: the usage statistics can be turned off, but as soon as you close and reopen the program, they turn back on.
RobNBanks made his own screenmate engine, called Sprites. It's pretty cool, although it's basically a bunch of gifs moving around your screen, and many of the download links on his site don't work due to bad website code.
Desktop Ponies is a way to get all your favourite MLP characters on your desktop. Only for Windows, but there's a Linux version called qt-ponies (pronounced cute-ponies).
There are also some small programs in my collection which aren't really screenmates, but are pretty dang cool, and I have nowhere else to talk about these anyhow. Brain Test is a cool brain test program that can now only be found in my Screenmates collection in the Downloads page! It's a fun little brain quiz that tests whether you use your left or right hemisphere more.
There's also the Strong Bad Clock, which is basically an alarm clock featuring Strong Bad, and you can change how he announces the hour and how the alarm sounds. There are three different modes: normal, soothing, and angry.
Microsoft Agent is not exactly a screenmate, but it's an awesome interactive agent program which has characters that talk to you. If you want to make your own characters, download the Microsoft Agent Character Editor, and download the unofficial Microsoft Agent Scripting Helper if you want to control what they say to you. You can use it to make cartoons with the Agents, which is cool. I've made some over the years starring Peedy and FinFin, which I plan to put online at some point.
Bonzi Buddy is funny. I don't think he poses much of a spyware risk anymore, but play with him at your own risk! Interestingly, I got MS Agent to work on my Arch Linux installation by installing Bonzi Buddy through Wine.
The best fully-fledged virtual pets are Petz and Creatures, and the best online virtual pet sites are Flight Rising, Poppy Seed Pets, Psypets, Terrepets, Goatlings, and Neopets.
Ukagaka / Ghosts
Those are the terms for screenmates made with SSP. Here's a guide to downloading ghosts. SSP can be a little finicky, but if you can work with it, you can do some really cool stuff with it, such as telling interactive stories, adding relationship levels with the user, or even having the ghost move around on their own! Here's an awesome ghost-making guide by Zarla made back when there weren't many ghosts around. There's also a Discord for ghost makers :D
SSP works in Wine, but you can't drag and drop nar files onto the currently running ghost to install ghosts or balloons as it won't do anything with it. Also, sounds don't work even with LAV Filters installed. When characters speak, it steals focus from the previously active window to SSP, which can be a problem when you're typing stuff.
Here's a cool video that's an intro to the ukagaka scene :D There's a cameo at the end from my MLP ghost ;)
I made my own ghosts! Download Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash and their balloon, as well as The Narrator, and more, at my Petz site.
Links
About desktop pets & virtual companions-discussing the inhabitants that fill the void of our digital spaces --- An awesome article by Alienmelon; go check out their amazing art!
Official Shimeji download page.
Neko Fanpage with working downloads.
Download page for Puppy, Kingfisher, Dino, Felix (old), Sheep, and Orange.
Download page for Felix (old), Black Cat and Lazy Cat.
Misc. screenmates. Mario, Sonic, etc.
Official MessageMates site! Most downloads work. :D There's also multiple huge collections of MessageMates on Archive.org.
Lost Media Wiki page about ThinkDesktop Screenmates.
Check the Downloads page for Part 1 of my huge collection of screenmates! :D Part 2 coming at some point, hopefully soon...
Created on Wed, Oct 7, 2020, and updated with more screenmates on Thu, Oct 8, 2020, and Fri, Oct 9, 2020. Added guide to installing ghosts on Sun, Oct 11, 2020. Updated Pinkie and Dashie ghost on Sat, Dec 12, 2020 to Version 1 (minor fixes, and some new lines). Older version found here. Updated the ghost once again to Version 1.1, with cool new features to discover for yourself ;) and nothing removed, on Sun, Dec 13, 2020. Updated the ghost on Dec 20, 2020, and on Jan 2, 2021 (moved the newest link to it to the Downloads page on that date as well). Updated page on Thu, May 19, 2022 (added Linux fix for PenPen :D ). Updated again on Tue, Sep 20, 2022 (finally found the Wind-Up Bird screenmate! :D Changed the WUB description, ;) and various other edits). Updated once more on Tuesday, Jan 31, 2023 (mentioned a great video about Ukagakas :D ). Updated again on Thu, Mar 9, 2023 (added mention of The Narrator screenmate). Updated once again on Sun, Jan 14, 2024 (added some more info and removed DesktopDude as the site is gone! While it is on Wayback, downloading doesn't work as the zip files are corrupt). Updated again on Tue, Sep 3, 2024 (Laura's Celebration and Cat Screen Mates pages are gone after a very long time of being up ;) Replaced with Wayback Machine links where most of the downloads work). Updated once more on Sat, Mar 8, 2025 (added more screenmates and more info about SSP on Linux, fixed a broken link, and finally tested out the Simpsons Screenmates).