If you had a Tamagotchi in the 90s you remember the deal: a tiny creature lived in your pocket, and it beeped until you fed it. Miss enough beeps and you came back to a very small grave. Pets Therapy is that idea rebuilt for the machine you already stare at all day — minus the part that made you feel bad.
What a desktop Tamagotchi is
A desktop Tamagotchi is a virtual pet that lives on your computer screen instead of a keychain device. In Pets Therapy your pets walk across your desktop, sit on the edges of your open windows, nap, fall with gravity and can be picked up and dragged around. The difference from a screensaver is that you can reach in and interact with them: feed them, hand them a toy, tell them to take a nap, or just send them some love.
Tamagotchi without the guilt
This is the important bit, and it's a deliberate design choice rather than a missing feature. Pets Therapy has no hunger bar, no happiness stat and no decay timer. Your pet will never be "starving" because you were in a four-hour meeting. Nothing dies. Nothing flashes at you demanding attention.
You feed your pet because watching a capybara chew grass is a nice thing to happen in the corner of a bad Tuesday — not because a meter is draining. The care loop is opt-in, which is what makes it relaxing instead of another thing on your todo list.
🍎 Feed them
Open the Pets Interactions window, pick one of your pets, and drag its food out onto it. 87 of the 111 pets have their own hand-drawn food — and it's genuinely per-pet. The capybara gets grass. The cat gets fish. Try to feed the cat's fish to the capybara and it'll politely decline. Read more about feeding →
🎾 Play with them
Flip the same window from Food to Actions and every pet shows you its toys. Drag one onto your pet and it plays the matching animation for about six seconds. There are 132 toys across 88 pets, triggering 57 different animations — the lion roars, the T-Rex breathes fire, the panda picks up a lightsaber, the dolphin jumps through hoops. See what the pets can do →
💬 They talk to each other
When two of your pets happen to bump into each other, they stop and have a conversation — a speech bubble pops up with little pixel symbols, one pet raises a few subjects, then the other answers. There are 67 topics and a single conversation never repeats one. More about pet conversations →
🏆 They earn achievements
Your pets quietly keep track of how far they've walked, how much love you've sent and how many you've looked after, and hand you milestones for it. It works completely offline and signed out, and no achievement is behind a paywall. Achievements are on macOS today, with Windows parity on the way. See all six achievements →
How it compares to a real Tamagotchi
| Classic Tamagotchi | Pets Therapy | |
|---|---|---|
| Lives on | A keychain device | Your desktop |
| Number of pets | One at a time | Up to 25 on screen at once |
| Feeding | Yes | Yes — 87 pets, each with its own food |
| Playing | A minigame | 132 toys, 57 animations |
| Punishes neglect | Yes — your pet dies | No. Nothing decays |
| Nags you | Constantly | Never |
| Pets interact with each other | No | Yes — they hold conversations |
| Price | Buy the device | Free — 37 pets free forever |
Get started
Pets Therapy is free on the Mac App Store, the Microsoft Store and Steam. Download it, pick a pet, and it's on your screen in seconds — then right-click it and give it a snack.