Mac personalization, beyond the wallpaper
Most desktop customization on a Mac is a still picture: a wallpaper you found, an icon set, a widget in the corner, a menu bar tidied up once and then forgotten. A buddy is the part of your desktop that moves, and almost all of it is yours to set. This is the whole list, from who stands there to the one file you can edit yourself.
What a wallpaper cannot do
A wallpaper is chosen once and becomes furniture. A buddy is a small 3D character standing on the top edge of your Dock, or your taskbar on a PC, who walks along it, gets on with something of their own and answers when you click them. So the settings below are less about decorating a screen and more about deciding what sort of company you want on it.
Who stands there, and how many
Up to two buddies are out at a time, and which two is yours to pick. Max is curious and a little restless; Avery keeps a quieter rhythm; one of each feels different from two of either. The menu-bar menu has a switch for each buddy you own, and the hub shows your two slots, so swapping who is out takes one click and nothing is lost when you put someone away.
How big they are, and how far they wander
Each buddy has its own size, Small through Extra large, so one can loom while the other stays a thumbnail. Where they go is a separate choice: “Stay in their spot” keeps a buddy in one patch, “Along the Dock” lets them cross from one end to the other, and “Across the whole screen” gives them the full width above the Dock. Drag a buddy along the floor and, with “Stay in their spot” on, that is where they live now.
What they get up to
You are not writing a timetable. Max has 37 activities and Avery 39, and left alone they pick their own, tinker and nap between clicks. What you set is the frame: turn exploring off and they stay put until you ask, or use a buddy’s right-click menu to choose one of the 8 moods, start a favourite action, or set a whole story running.
Whether they notice your day
This is the setting that changes the character of the thing most, and it is off until you switch it on. With “What your Mac is doing” on, a buddy follows the charger going in, the minutes you spend away from the keyboard, a locked screen and the hour of the evening, and picks something that suits. AI mode, which follows whether Claude Code or Codex is working or waiting for you, is a separate switch beside it, so you can have one without the other.
How much noise, if any
Sounds are off to start with, and there is a volume slider next to the switch. The rule behind them is worth knowing before you decide: nothing makes a sound on its own. A poke, a drag, a run you asked for and the charger are what speak; a buddy working away quietly while you type stays quiet.
The file you can edit yourself
If the settings are not fine-grained enough, the mappings behind them are a file. Copy the app’s awareness file to ~/Library/Application Support/app.mydockbuddies.mac/awareness.json, change which activities belong to which situation, their weights and the timings, then restart the app. It only ever reads that file and never writes to it, so your version stands until you change it again.
Personalization that stays out of the way
The point of all of this is a desktop that feels like yours, not one you have to manage. A click on the empty space around a buddy goes through to whatever is behind it. They draw at a gentler pace standing about, and stop drawing altogether when they are hidden, held or the screen is locked. If it ever feels like too much, one buddy at a smaller size with exploring off is a very quiet setting.
A buddy who looks like someone you know
The furthest you can take this is a character made from photos: a stylized buddy of you, or of an adult who agreed to it, rather than an exact copy of a face. Custom requests come with the memberships, and memberships are coming soon.
Where to start
Before any of it, the playground on our home page: click blue for a walk, coral for a run, yellow for a jump, mint for a wave or purple for a celebration, drag to look around, and hear the sounds with nothing installed. Then the app itself, free for Mac and for Windows, with your buddies appearing once you sign in.