Mushroom › Features

Everything Mushroom can do.

The whole list. Almost all of it is off until you ask for it, and nothing here costs extra beyond the one purchase.

It watches the clock so you don't

It looks after you.

Six small nudges, timed around what you are actually doing, and the controls to shape them.

Water

Gentle sips, not nagging. It asks once and lets it go.

Breaks

It notices how long you have really been active, then suggests a stretch.

Snacks

Because lunch keeps mysteriously disappearing.

Eye strain

The 20-20-20 rule, remembered for you.

Bedtime and quiet hours

No pings while you are away or winding down.

How you are

A gentle check-in you answer with one tap. No wrong answer, and no opinion about it.

Your own reminders

"Remind me in 2 hours to call Tom." Plain words, and it just happens. Or type one into the form and edit it later: every day, certain weekdays, every few days, or once a month.

Tune each one

Every reminder gets its own sound, its own hours, and a daily goal if you want one. Water on the clock, snacks only at lunch, and your own list of little chores for break time.

Done, Snooze, or Skip

Not right now? Skip it, and the next one still arrives on the normal interval. Your mushroom takes an honest "no" as well as it takes a yes.

Pause when you need to

One menu bar click holds every nudge back for an hour, until tomorrow, or until you say so. Nothing is lost, it all arrives once you are back.

Appointments

Tick a shared family calendar and your mushroom nudges you before each appointment. It only reads your calendar, and there is nothing to set up or sync.

Focus sessions

Pick a length from the menu bar, ask in plain words, or start one from Shortcuts. It holds its nudges for the whole session and wears a small countdown. When the time is up it suggests a break, asks how it went in one tap, and the session lands in your stats. Nothing held back is lost.

Streaks, stats and trends

Your streak, six months of activity at a glance, this week against last week. Miss a day and nothing is taken away, and a quieter week is never shown in red. Settings, Data can save the whole history out as a spreadsheet.

It learns when to ask

Your mushroom notices when a nudge keeps going unanswered at the same time of day, and offers to keep quiet then. It shows you which hours and why, and nothing changes unless you say yes. Worked out on your Mac, from what is already saved there, and never sent anywhere.

Set up in one click

Pick a starting point and the intervals and goals are chosen for you.

Meeting aware

Optionally stay quiet while a calendar event is on.

Call aware

Stay quiet while your mic is live, for the calls no calendar knows about. Asks for no permission.

Dark room

On a Mac with a light sensor, a nudge to put a light on. Direct download only.

Focus mode friendly

Turn on a macOS Focus and the pet fades back, or pauses, or both.

Only when it needs you

Out of sight until a reminder is waiting. Or always on screen. Your call.

The Reminders window listing four reminders, each with when it next fires and a Pause, edit and delete control on its row.

The reminders list is the only place a reminder can be paused or deleted, so nothing ever disappears by accident.

Talk to your mushroom

It talks, and it helps.

Ask for anything in plain language. The model runs on your Mac, on Apple Intelligence or one you download once.

Read aloud

Copy any text, press your shortcut, and your mushroom reads it back. Pick the voice and the speed.

Photo memories

Once a day your mushroom shows you an old photo, a gentle little look back. Off until you ask for it, and it only reads your photos, never changing or sending them.

People to call, and video calls

List the people you would want to reach in a hurry. A help button opens big, readable rows: the name, the number in plain text, and one button that calls.

Shortcuts, and Siri

"Add a Reminder" and "Start a Focus Session" are Shortcuts actions, so they drop straight into your own automations. Mushroom does not even have to be open.

Tool plugins

One small JSON file teaches the chat a new trick: a cat fact, a word lookup, your own API. Browse the gallery.

Email scan

Drop in a suspicious message and it checks the sender, the links and the files, then tells you plainly what it found.

Weather

Conditions or tomorrow's forecast, and it knows where you mean.

Sunrise and sunset

A gentle hello as the sun comes up, and again as it goes down.

A quote each morning

One inspirational line and who said it, word for word.

Time anywhere

"What time is it in Beijing?" Several places at once, if you like.

Daily news digest

Your own feeds, three to five headlines a day, quoted word for word.

Notepad

A little scratchpad that saves as you type.

Snooze by chat

"Snooze that for 20 minutes." Said, done.

Five languages

English, Deutsch, Français, Español, 日本語.

Your shortcuts

Record your own keys to open chat, notes, or reminders from any app.

Pong and Snake

Two little games in the menu bar, for a proper break.

It runs

Ask it to "do something cool" and it sprints across your screen.

The Stash

Links, notes and files you throw at the pet, kept in one place, searchable, and synced to your phone.

Markdown viewer

Double-click a markdown file, or choose Mushroom from Open With, and it opens clean and scrollable: headings, lists, tables, code blocks and quotes all rendered properly, no other app needed.

The chat panel above the pet. The user has asked what the weather is, and the mushroom has answered with the conditions in Los Angeles.

Ask in plain words. The model runs on your Mac, so the conversation never leaves it.

Mushroom to mushroom

Say hello, mushroom to mushroom.

Your mushroom can carry messages. Invite one person with an 8 character code that works once, then chat in a panel right under the pet. There are no usernames and no directory to appear in: a code is the only way anyone reaches you.

8character code
Oncethen it expires
Lockedbefore it leaves
30dthen the server forgets
Nousernames to find

Messages are locked on your Mac and opened on theirs, so the server only ever passes along something it cannot read. Each conversation shows a safety number: read it out to your friend and if it matches on both Macs then nobody is in the middle. Blocking someone or deleting a conversation is one click.

What Friends needs, and how to run it yourself ›

Spore Storage

Share your files with your grandmother.

Drop a file on your mushroom and it hands you back a link. The file is locked on your Mac first, and the key to open it lives inside the link, so our server holds something it cannot read. Send the link to anyone, with nothing to install and no account at their end.

24hthen it's gone
End to endencrypted
95 MBper file
3 GBlive at once
10files per drop
Anyfile type

What Spore Storage needs, and how to run it yourself ›

On the App Store

Now in your pocket.

The phone carries the three things that are better in your pocket than on a Mac you have walked away from. On the App Store it is one app rather than two, so buying either one covers the other, and everything moves through your own iCloud account.

Reminders, wherever you are

Anything you asked to be reminded of turns up on the phone too, and you can make one there. Water, breaks and the other built-in nudges stay on the Mac, because they follow how long you have really been at your desk.

Your Stash on the train

Everything you saved, searchable, and you can add a link or a note from the phone's Share sheet. The offline copies of pages stay on the Mac, where there is room for them.

Answer a friend

The same conversations, the names you gave people, and what you have already read. Point the phone at the code your Mac shows in Settings, Friends, and it will join the same licence, bringing your own servers with it if that is what your Mac uses.

The phone has no pet and no chat. It is there for the moments you are away from your desk, and the Mac stays the main event.

Add-on

Dress your mushroom.

Ten colours, in an add-on that puts a Skins tab in Settings. Purely cosmetic: nothing in it changes a reminder.

Free with the app, and separate from this: Settings, General also offers a Work look, a sphere of sparkling water that sloshes when you drag it, for desks where a cartoon pet is one question too many.

$1.99 excl. tax, on top of Mushroom itself. Needs 1.23.0 or later, with black and white arriving in 1.46.0, and a licence key from this site: on the Mac App Store version that means owning the direct version too, then one line in Terminal. The colour you pick stays on the Mac you picked it on.

Kind by design

It stays private.

Everything lives on your Mac, and the model it chats with runs there too. Two things can ever leave, and both start switched off.

On-device, and no tracking

The chat model runs on your Mac. No analytics, no tracking. Only weather, the daily quote, news and the tools you add go online, and only for what they fetch.

Your own iCloud, or none

Turn on iCloud sync and your Macs share through your own private iCloud, never through us. Leave it off and nothing syncs at all.

Run the servers yourself

Both server features can run in your own cloud account or on your own hardware, and neither touches us. The server software is open source: read it or run it. That setting is in both versions.

No Accessibility, no Input Monitoring

It never reads what you type. It reads one number the system already keeps: how long since you last touched anything.

Daily backups

Point it at a folder and it keeps a daily snapshot, the newest 3 kept. Restoring is one explicit act through the Import button.

The whole policy

What is stored, what is never sent, and the legal basis for each. Read the privacy policy.

Try the whole thing for a week.

Everything on this page, switched on, for 7 days. No account and no card.