🍄 Mushroom is now on the Mac App Store.
Mushroom
Take care of yourself without the guilt or the alarms.
A private, on-device desktop pet for your Mac that gently nudges you to stay hydrated, move, and focus.
Free for 7 days · No account or card · Runs privately on your Mac
🔒 Private LLM, on-device Signed & notarized macOS 15 or later, Apple Silicon Runs on Apple Intelligence, or its own model
It watches the clock so you don't
You forget. It doesn't.
Six small nudges, timed around what you're actually doing, not a dumb timer shouting at an empty chair.
Water
Gentle sips, not nagging. It asks once and lets it go.
Breaks
It notices how long you've really been active, then suggests a stretch.
Snacks
Because lunch keeps mysteriously disappearing.
Eye strain
The 20-20-20 rule, remembered for you.
Bedtime & quiet hours
No pings while you're away or winding down.
How you are
A gentle check-in you answer with one tap. No wrong answer, and no opinion about it.
Then the controls to shape them.
Your own reminders
"Remind me in 2 hours to call Tom." Plain words, and it just happens. Or type one into the form, and edit it later: every day, certain weekdays, every few days, or once a month.
Shortcuts, and Siri
"Add a Reminder" and "Start a Focus Session" are Shortcuts actions, so they drop straight into your own shortcuts and automations. Name one "Nudge me" and Siri will run it for you. Mushroom does not even have to be open.
Done, Snooze, or Skip
Not right now? Skip it, and the next one still arrives on the normal interval. Your mushroom takes an honest "no" as well as it takes a yes.
Talk to your mushroom
Click it. It answers.
Ask for anything in plain language. It runs on Apple Intelligence, or on a small model you download once, and either way it stays entirely on your Mac. Every nudge arrives in Mushroom's own words, phrased fresh each time.
🍄 Stand, stretch, and take a short break, you!
remind me in 2 hours to call Tom
Noted. Tom, two hours. I'll tap you on the shoulder. 🍄
Mushroomnow
Time for some water 💧
Done Snooze Skip
45 minutes of focus. I'll keep quiet until then. 🍄
It keeps learning
New tricks, same little mushroom.
Updates install themselves, and each one teaches it something new. Three of the bigger ones:
Focus sessions
Tell your mushroom you are working. Pick a length from the menu bar, or ask in plain words ("focus for 45 minutes on the proposal"). It keeps its nudges to itself and wears a small countdown so you can see what is left. Nothing held back is lost: it arrives once you are done.
Streaks, stats and trends
See your streak, six months of activity at a glance, and how each habit is going. Miss a day and nothing is taken away, and a quieter week is never shown in red.
It learns when to ask
Your mushroom notices when a nudge keeps going unanswered at the same time of day, and offers to keep it quiet then. Nothing changes unless you say yes. Worked out on your Mac, and never sent anywhere.
Friends
Say hello, mushroom to mushroom.
Give one person an invite code and your two mushrooms carry messages between you, in a little panel under the pet. Every message is locked on your Mac before it leaves and opened on theirs, so our server passes along something it cannot read. Nobody can look you up: there are no usernames and no directory, and a code is the only way anyone reaches you.
8character code
Oncethen it expires
Lockedbefore it leaves
30dthen the server forgets
Nousernames to find
Friends is one of two things that travel between Macs, so it runs on our servers and comes as a membership, $2.99 a month or $24.99 a year. If you bought Mushroom before the membership existed, it stays yours for good, and running it on your own server needs no membership at all.
It is our server that hands you a friend's key, so each conversation shows a safety number: read it out to them on a call or in person, and if it matches on both Macs then nobody is in the middle. Starts switched off. Turn it on in Settings, Friends, which is also where you can see when a friend is at their Mac and when they are typing, or switch both off. Sent something you would rather take back? Hover your own message and unsend it, and it goes from their Mac too. You can also set a status, so your friends see what you are up to when they point at your name, and start a focus session together: one button starts yours and offers them the same.
Spore Storage
Share your files with your grandmother.
Drop a file on your mushroom and it hands you back a link. The file is locked on your Mac before it goes, and the key to open it lives inside the link itself, so our server stores something we cannot read. Send the link to anyone, on any computer, with nothing to install and no account to make at their end. After 24 hours it stops working and the file is deleted.
24hthen it's gone
End to endencrypted
95 MBper file
3 GBlive at once
10files per drop
Anyfile type
Spore Storage runs on our servers too, so it is the other half of the same membership, $2.99 a month or $24.99 a year. Bought Mushroom before it existed? It stays yours, and your own server needs no membership.
Starts switched off. Turn it on in Settings, Sharing, which is also where you'll find your limits and everything still live. The key is the part of the link after the # sign, so anyone holding the whole link can open that file. Send it only to the people you meant to.
Kind by design
A companion, not a taskmaster.
No guilt, ever
Ignore a few reminders and Mushroom droops a little. One click cheers it right back up. No death, and a streak you break costs you nothing.
Private by default
Everything lives on your Mac, and the LLM it chats with runs on-device, so your conversations stay yours. No analytics, no tracking. Only weather, the daily quote, news and tools you add go online, and only for what they fetch. Turn on iCloud sync and your Macs share through your own private iCloud, never through us. Two things can ever leave your Mac, and both start switched off, and both are locked before they go. A file you deliberately share is encrypted on your Mac, with the key inside the link and never on our server, and it is deleted after 24 hours. A message you send a friend is locked the same way, so our server passes it on without being able to read it, and drops it after 30 days. If even that is too much, a company can run both of those servers itself, in its own cloud account or on its own hardware, and neither one touches us. The server software is open source: read it or run it. That setting is in both versions, the one you download from this site and the Mac App Store one.
Small and well-behaved
Lives in your menu bar, no Dock icon. Signed, notarized, updates itself. Hide the pet anytime, reminders keep working.
Speaks your language
Chats natively in English, German, French, Spanish, or Japanese. Pick yours in Settings.
Add-on
Dress your mushroom.
Eight colors, already in the app. Add the Original Skins add-on file and a Skins tab appears in Settings; pick a color and your pet changes on the spot. Default Red is always in the list, so the mushroom you started with is one click away.
$1.99 excl. tax.
Needs Mushroom 1.23.0 or later. On the version downloaded from this site it works as soon as the add-on file is added. On the Mac App Store version, give it your license key from this site first, which takes one line in Terminal.
The color you pick stays on the Mac you picked it on, and skins come in packs, each one separate from the others.
More colors in the works. Want a particular one? Tell us.
What's next
There's more on the way.
New things land often, and they land for everyone who already bought. Here is what is on the bench right now.
More colors
More skins for the Original Skins pack, so your mushroom can keep changing its mind. Got a color you want? Tell us and it goes on the list.
More tricks
The tool gallery keeps filling up, with plugins from us and from people who write their own. Every one of them is a small JSON file you can read before you add it.
Pay once. Every update since 1.0 has been free to everyone who already bought, and that is not changing. The price goes up as Mushroom grows, so the earlier you take one home, the less it costs.
Plans, not promises. Some of these change, and things that are not on this list ship too.
Pay once
Take one home.
Two ways to take one home, and either way you pay once for the app. Download from here to try it free for 7 days first, or get it from the Mac App Store.
50% off with LAUNCH50
Direct download
excl. tax
Free for 7 days · Instant download · One license covers up to 3 Macs · All future updates included · Add-ons and your own servers are available here · The discount is applied for you, for a limited time. Sales are processed by Gumroad.
Mac App Store
$5.99
plus tax where Apple charges it
The purchase is the license, so there is no key to enter for the app and no trial · Installs and updates through the App Store · All future updates included · Friends and Spore Storage come as a membership · Add-ons and skins need a license key from this site · No custom servers.
Friends and Spore Storage send things between Macs, so they run on our servers and come as a membership: $2.99 a month or $24.99 a year, on either version. Everyone who bought Mushroom before the membership existed keeps both, for good. You can also run them on your own server, which needs no membership.
macOS 15 or later Apple Silicon Apple Intelligence, or a downloaded model Small footprint on your disk
Teach it new tricks
Tool plugins
One small JSON file teaches the pet a new trick: a cat fact, a word lookup, your own API. Browse the gallery, grab a tool, or submit your own.