The Best Desktop Pets for Windows in 2026

A desktop pet is a small animated character that lives on your Windows desktop and keeps you company while you work. There are more good ones in 2026 than ever. Here is how to choose, and the ones worth knowing for Windows 10 and 11.

What to look for in a Windows desktop pet

• Proper Windows support, so it runs well on Windows 10 and 11 without workarounds.
• Light on your PC, so it never competes with your work or your games.
• Privacy: it should never need to read your screen.
• A look you actually want on your desktop all day.

The picks

PebbletsIO is our own take, so treat this as the house pick. It puts hand-crafted 3D pets on your Windows desktop that wander, react, and dance to your music. It runs on Windows 10 (21H2) and 11 with a DirectX 12 GPU, never reads your screen, and every pet is bought once and kept forever. There is a free duck to start and a signature K-pop idol line if you want more of a show.

Shimeji is the free classic and feels most at home on Windows. Little characters climb your windows, and thousands of community sprite packs let you swap in almost any character. It is endlessly customisable but a little dated. Here is an honest Shimeji comparison.

Desktop Goose started life on Windows. A single goose honks, steals your cursor, and drags notes around your screen. It is a brilliant joke rather than a calm companion, as we cover in our Desktop Goose comparison.

So which should you pick?

If you want free and endlessly moddable, Shimeji is the one. If you want a laugh, get the goose. If you want a calm, premium set of hand-crafted companions that just work on Windows and stay yours forever, that is what we built PebbletsIO to be. Not sure what a desktop pet even is yet? Start with our short guide.