A WorkKit product · macOS & Windows · Free
WorkKit Buddy wanders your screen, dances to whatever you're playing, hands you your notifications in person and cheers you on while you work. Native, light and private — and it can look like anyone you want.
Version 1.1 · free · no account · everything stays on your computer · all downloads
Daily sync · Meet link ready
Characters
Every character has its own animations, tracking eyes and personality lines. The WorkKit logo is the default; the rest are one click away. Drop any image on the buddy and it becomes your character — plain backgrounds are cut out automatically.
WorkKitthe original
Kitquick fox
Duckrubber-duck debugging
Botstatus lights
Pengubest dancer
Blobpure squish
Spikeblooms when happy
Hootnight owl
Mochasteams while you work
Corgiwalk? walk?
Capynaps in a hot spring
Octomultitasker
Buzzbusy bee
Boohaunts deadlines
Slono rush
Catthe classic
BriefcaseWorkKit, suited upWhat it does
Two things make WorkKit Buddy different from every other desktop pet: it really listens to your music, and it hands you your notifications in person. The rest keeps it useful all day.
It listens to whatever your computer plays — Spotify, YouTube in any browser, a game — finds the beat and the tempo, and picks eight moves by the track's energy: sway, bob, shimmy, side-steps, moonwalk, jumps, headbang, spins. Disco glow, equalizer, and a burst on the drop.
Reminders, meeting alerts and messages arrive with character: it walks over, drops an envelope or flies in a paper plane, knocks for urgent ones, then holds up a card with Open, Snooze and Dismiss. Quiet hours keep it calm in the evening.
Connect once and the buddy shows what Claude is doing — thinking, editing, running tests, waiting for you, done — so you can look away without missing the moment it needs you.
A focus timer with a progress ring on the pet, break reminders, stand-up and wrap-up nudges, meeting alerts, battery warnings. It naps when you're away and greets you back.
Seventeen characters with their own lines, four sizes, and any picture you drag onto it. The personality is plain JSON, so a team can ship its own mascot in an afternoon.
Use cases
The buddy's badge tells you when Claude is thinking, editing or running tests, taps you on the shoulder when it's waiting for your OK, and celebrates when the run succeeds — no tab-switching to check.
Start a 25-minute focus session from the menu and watch the ring count down. Breaks arrive as a card you can snooze, water and stretch reminders come from a friend rather than an alarm, and stand-up and wrap-up nudges bookend the day.
WorkKit Buddy was built around the WorkKit logo — a small, friendly presence for the brand all day long. Any team can do the same: drop in your own character and share one installer.
It listens on-device only for the beat and the energy of the track, picks matching moves, and shows the song title it finds in your player or browser tab. Nothing is recorded, nothing leaves your machine.
Private by design
The music feature analyses loudness and beats live in memory and throws the audio away. On macOS it asks once for System Audio Recording; on Windows it needs no permission at all. Nothing is written to disk or uploaded.
Swift and AppKit on macOS (Apple silicon and Intel), WPF on Windows. One small process, no web view, no background services — quit it and it's gone.
No sign-in, no analytics, no telemetry. The optional Claude Code integration only adds a hook to your local ~/.claude/settings.json when you click Connect, and removes it when you disconnect.
Download · version 1.1 · Windows 1.1.1
Installers are self-signed for now (we're not in the App Store or on the Microsoft Store yet), so each system shows a one-time security notice. The steps below take about ten seconds.
macOS 14 Sonoma or newer · Apple silicon and Intel · installs the app and a lock-screen screen saver
Download WorkKitBuddy-1.1.pkg.pkg and click through the installer.Blocked by the security notice? The illustrated install guide shows exactly where to click.
Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit · installs for your account only, no administrator rights
Download WorkKitBuddy-Setup.exeSetup.exe.Prefer no installer? WorkKitBuddy-windows.zip — unzip anywhere and run WorkkitBuddy.exe.
Blocked by SmartScreen? The illustrated install guide shows exactly where to click.
chrome://extensions. chrome://downloads shows the reason next to the item.SHA-256 checksums of the release files (compare with shasum -a 256 <file> on Mac or certutil -hashfile <file> SHA256 on Windows):
1c50118d6a5ae443c8122f8b7bc1aebaade757559ea45bca4d38b0ab456d5ba9 WorkKitBuddy-1.1.pkg3d4d24b41be295076a9780e47a5b0b756b205355402c68f39efd45febdfddc4f WorkKitBuddy-Setup.exe7c9b30a98be09de204cd251459833eddb618fe99254361a7301880629ca2a5ed WorkKitBuddy-windows.zipInstall guide · the one-time security notice
WorkKit Buddy is signed with WorkKit's own certificate rather than Apple's or Microsoft's paid developer certificates, so the first time you open the installer your computer asks whether you trust it. Nothing is wrong with the file — you can compare it with the published checksums any time.
Apple could not verify “WorkKitBuddy-1.1.pkg” is free of malware that may harm your Mac or compromise your privacy.
Don't see Open Anyway? The button only appears after you've tried to open the package, and it stays for about an hour. Double-click the .pkg again, click Done, then look in Privacy & Security.
This removes the "downloaded from the internet" flag from the file. Paste it into Terminal, press Return, then double-click the package as usual.
xattr -d com.apple.quarantine ~/Downloads/WorkKitBuddy-1.1.pkgMicrosoft Defender SmartScreen prevented an unrecognised app from starting. Running this app might put your PC at risk.
More infoApp: WorkKitBuddy-Setup.exe
Publisher: Unknown publisher
WorkKitBuddy-Setup.exe. If the blue "Windows protected your PC" screen appears, click the small More info link under the text.Antivirus held the file? Some scanners quarantine installers they haven't seen before. Restore it, compare it with the checksum, and add an exception if you're asked.
Using the portable zip? The first run of WorkkitBuddy.exe can show the same SmartScreen screen. The same two clicks fix it.
Why the security notice? Apple and Microsoft only skip it for apps signed with their paid developer certificates. WorkKit Buddy is signed with our own certificate instead, so each computer asks you once. We'll switch to notarized builds as the product grows — and the notice goes away for everyone.
Free, and staying free
WorkKit Buddy costs nothing, has no ads and never will. If it makes your day a little nicer, a coffee keeps the buddies coming — new characters, new dance moves, signed installers.
Tips go to the WorkKit team and fund Buddy and the other free tools we put out. No account needed, one-off or monthly.
FAQ
Yes. WorkKit Buddy is a free product from WorkKit for anyone on macOS or Windows. No account, no trial, no upsell inside the app.
No. To dance it measures the loudness and beats of what your computer is playing, live, in memory, and discards the audio immediately. It never records, saves or uploads anything. It doesn't look at your screen at all.
On macOS it asks Spotify or Music what they're playing and reads music-site titles from your browser tabs (macOS will ask once per browser). On Windows it uses the system's media-session information — the same thing the volume flyout shows. The title is only shown to you in the menu.
Yes. Right-click the buddy › Character › Use my own image…, or drag a picture onto it. Plain backgrounds are removed automatically and it gets the same animations as the built-in characters. Custom characters are stored in your user folder and survive updates.
Drag it anywhere; it stays where you drop it. Turn on Ghost mode to let clicks pass through it, use Hide (or the hotkey ⌃⌥H on Mac) to make it vanish, and Quiet hours to stop the chatter in the evening.
Right-click › Claude Code › Connect. It adds hooks to ~/.claude/settings.json (a backup is kept next to it) so the buddy reacts when Claude is thinking, editing, testing, waiting for you, finished or hit an error. Disconnect removes them again.
Yes — it registers a URL scheme. From a terminal or any tool that can open a link:
macOS: open -g "workkitbuddy://notify?title=Deploy&text=Production%20is%20live&url=https://workkit.in" Windows: start "" "workkitbuddy://say?text=hello"
Tell us through the WorkKit contact page. Include your OS version and, for Mac, the log at ~/Library/Logs/WorkkitBuddy.log (Windows: %APPDATA%\WorkkitBuddy\WorkkitBuddy.log) if something misbehaves.
Mac: quit it from the menu, then delete WorkKit Buddy from Applications and WorkKit Buddy.saver from /Library/Screen Savers. Windows: Settings › Apps › WorkKit Buddy › Uninstall. Your settings and custom characters are kept unless you delete them yourself.