A 3D desktop pet for your Mac Dock
A 3D desktop pet is a different thing from the flat ones, and it is worth pinning down before you go shopping. Ours are rigged 3D models — a skeleton, joints to the fingertips, a face that changes with their mood — standing on the top edge of your Mac’s Dock, walking along it and getting on with something of their own. There is also an older meaning of “3D Dock”, from the days of the glass shelf, and it is not this. Here is what each one is, so the search takes you somewhere useful.
A 3D-looking Dock
This is skinning. The Dock keeps doing exactly what it did — launching apps — and is drawn with perspective, a glass shelf, a reflection under the icons. macOS has had a version of this built in for years, and third-party Dock replacements go further with magnification curves and stacks. Nothing in it moves unless your pointer makes it move, and nothing lives there.
A 3D character on the Dock
The other kind leaves your Dock completely alone and adds a layer above it. That is what My Dock Buddies is: a small rigged 3D character standing on the top edge of your Dock, walking from one end to the other, getting on with something of their own and answering when you click. Your icons, their order, magnification and every Dock setting stay exactly as you left them.
Why we do not replace the Dock
Replacing the Dock means sitting between you and launching apps, which is a bad place for a decoration to sit. If our app is closed you lose a character; you do not lose the way your computer opens things. So the app draws in its own transparent window above the Dock, and a click on the empty space around a buddy passes straight through to whatever is behind it.
Actually 3D, not a picture of 3D
The word is worth checking when you are comparing apps. A sprite drawn at an angle is a flat image that always faces you the same way. Our buddies are real models with a skeleton: joints down to the fingers, hands that hold a mug or a cable, and a face that changes with their mood. Drag the playground on the home page around and you are turning a model, not swapping pictures.
On Windows it is the taskbar
There is no Dock on a PC, and the same idea lands on the taskbar instead: the buddies stand on the top edge of it and walk along it. Taskbar customization on Windows usually means transparency, alignment and icon tweaks; this is the same distinction as on a Mac, a layer above rather than a replacement.
What you can change
How big each buddy is, how far along the Dock or taskbar they wander, which two of the ones you own are out, whether they follow what your computer is doing, and how much noise they make. All of it is in the app, and all of it is separate from your Dock settings.
Try it without installing anything
The playground on our home page is the same 3D character in a browser: click blue for a walk, coral for a run, yellow for a jump, mint for a wave or purple for a celebration, and drag to look around. If that is what you meant by a 3D Dock, the app is a free download for a Mac or a PC.