They live on this page right now. Watch them walk along the headings, hop between the cards and say what they think of it. Pick one up, put it down, and see what it says.
Your device asks for less motion, so the pals are resting.
Add and remove pals with the buttons on their cards below. The flock is loading.
Every pal has its own way of moving, its own jokes and its own opinion about whatever it finds.
An orange tabby who may or may not be plotting world domination. Nobody knows until they open the box.
A serene guru who found inner peace on the dance floor. He still believes in you, constantly, but now with a beat.
A 90s nerd with taped glasses, a pocket protector and a source for everything. He has never once finished a sentence without a footnote.¹
A sparkly 90s pageant queen and the internet's most popular free download. Sweet, a little clueless, and campaigning for world peace and faster dial-up.
A small, sweet sheep named after a Greek letter she cannot spell. Very good at one thing: eating grass. Still looking for the grass.
A silver-haired detective in the great village tradition, armed with tea, biscuits and a long memory. Everyone is a suspect, especially whoever ate the last custard cream.
A plant-powered hero from a small leafy planet. Faster than a speeding crouton, and he'd like you to know he's vegan. He has mentioned it.
One line, no dependencies. Paste it before the closing </body> of your page.
It always shows the pals you have in your flock above.
<script type="module" src="https://thenerdnet.com/deskpals/deskpals.js"
data-pals="sheep,nerd,guru"
data-screen-comments="false"></script>data-pals: which pals to show, separated by commas.data-screen-comments="false": keeps the pals from reading your page title and headings. Leave it out if you'd like them to comment on your page.data-user: a first name the pals can use when they speak to your visitor (optional).data-platforms: a CSS selector for the things they can stand on (optional).The pals set no cookies, store nothing and send nothing from your visitors' browsers. Like any script loaded from another site, though, it is fetched from our server, which keeps an ordinary log of that request (the time, your visitor's IP address and browser, and the address of your page). We use that log only for daily totals of how many sites and visitors load the script, and we say so on our Privacy page. If you have a privacy policy, you may want to mention it. Visitors who ask their device for less motion are left in peace.
A pal is just a folder: a small JSON file that says how it moves and what it says, plus a handful of PNG pictures. Read the pack format guide to make one. A checker tool tells you if anything is off.
So pals can visit any website you do. It is coming next, and it will be free too.
Coming soonA GNOME extension puts the pals on your whole desktop, walking on your windows. It works today and is being tidied up for sharing.
Coming soonNews about new pals will appear in our feed and on the About page.
Tiny pixel friends that live on a web page. They walk along headings, cards and buttons, hop from one to another, say funny things about what they find, and can be picked up and dropped.
Yes. There is nothing to buy, no account to create and no advert anywhere near them.
Family mode is on by default and only offers pals whose every line is fine for all ages. A few pals have drier, grown-up humour (a detective who talks about murder mysteries, a cat with plans for world domination), and they stay switched off until you turn Family mode off.
The pals themselves collect nothing: they set no cookies, store nothing in your browser and send nothing from the page they live on. They only read the page they are standing on, to make their remarks, and that happens on your own device. On this page we count, anonymously, how many people visit, add a pal or copy the code, and our server logs each request for the script so we can total how many sites use it. The Nerd Net has no ads or third-party trackers; the Privacy page lists exactly what the site stores.
Yes. Pick your pals, copy the one-line snippet from the page and paste it into your HTML. It is a single small script with no dependencies.
Yes. A pal is a folder with a small JSON file and a few PNG pictures. The pack format guide explains how, and a checker tool tells you if anything is wrong.
It is designed not to. The script is small, it loads only the pals you pick, and it pauses itself when the tab is hidden. Visitors who ask their device for reduced motion are left in peace.
Not yet. A browser extension, so pals can visit any website, is next. For now you can meet them here or add them to your own site.