Mushroom

No. A timer fires on a schedule whether or not you are there. Mushroom reads how long it has been since you last touched the keyboard, so it knows the difference between you working through lunch and you being at lunch. It waits.

USD 9.99 excluding tax when you buy it here, or USD 5.99 on the App Store, which covers your Mac and your iPhone. Either way you pay once and it is yours. Every update since 1.0 has been free to everyone who already bought.

Your reminders, notes, chats and stats never leave your Mac. The chat runs on a language model on the machine itself, unless you choose to point it at a server of your own, which is off unless you turn it on. Two optional features send things between your own devices, and both are encrypted before they leave and can be run on your own server instead.

Yes, 7 days on the version you download from this site, with no account and no card. The Mac App Store version has no trial, because there the purchase is the licence.

Up to 5 devices on one purchase: Macs and Windows PCs with a licence from this site, or Macs and iPhones with the App Store purchase. If a licence check ever fails because you are offline, Mushroom keeps working: it will not lock you out over a network problem.

Mushroom is a pixel-art desktop pet for macOS and Windows. It sits on your screen and nudges you to drink water, take breaks, eat something, rest your eyes, and wind down at night. You can also click it and talk to it, and everything it knows about you stays on your computer.

A timer fires on a schedule whether or not you are at the desk, so within a week you are dismissing it without reading it. Mushroom reads how long it has been since you last touched the keyboard, which means it can tell the difference between you working through lunch and you being at lunch. An hour at the desk earns a nudge, and an hour away earns nothing, because you already took the break. The other half is that it is a pet. Muting a notification costs you nothing. Ignoring something you adopted feels different, and that is the whole reason it is still running on your Mac in month three.

The app is not. It is a one-time purchase and it never stops working, and every update since 1.0 has been free to everyone who already bought, on both stores. Friends messaging and Spore Storage, the two features that run on servers, are an optional membership at USD 2.99 a month or USD 24.99 a year, or free on a server of your own.

Mushroom goes to sleep in the menu bar. Nothing is deleted: your reminders, notes, stats and settings stay exactly where they are, and entering a licence key wakes all of it back up.

Up to 5 devices on one purchase: Macs and Windows PCs with a licence from this site, or Macs and iPhones with the App Store purchase. If a licence check ever fails because you are offline, Mushroom keeps working: it will not lock you out over a network problem.