Help and troubleshooting

Stuck on something? Start here. Questions about buying Mushroom, what it runs on, or what it does with your data are on the FAQ instead. If neither helps, mail hello@getmushroom.app or say hello on Discord.

Reminders

Nothing happens when the pet is hidden

With the pet on screen, reminders arrive as a speech bubble. With it hidden they arrive as macOS notifications instead, so notifications have to be allowed. Open Settings, Notifications in Mushroom: if permission is off you will see a warning there and a button that takes you straight to the right place in System Settings.

A reminder went quiet at a certain time of day

Two settings can do that. Quiet hours (Settings, Quiet) silence built-in nudges across a window you choose. Each reminder can also have its own active hours under Options, in which case it stays quiet outside them. Both are shown on screen wherever they are switched on.

Reminders stop while a Focus is on

That is the Focus filter doing its job. In System Settings, Focus, your Focus, Focus Filters, Mushroom has two independent switches: Dim Mushroom fades the pet, and Pause reminders holds nudges back. Anything held back arrives once the Focus ends, nothing is thrown away.

Reminders went quiet and no Focus is on

Check the menu bar. If a focus session is running, the Focus item reads "Focusing until" and the time it ends, and the pet wears a small countdown. Pick End Focus to stop it early. Reminders held back during a session arrive once it ends.

Mushroom does not appear in Focus filters

macOS only offers Focus filters for apps in your Applications folder. Move Mushroom.app there and open System Settings again.

Break reminders never arrive

Breaks are activity based, not clock based. Mushroom waits until you have been active for the length set in Settings, Activity (an hour by default) and stays quiet while you are already away from the Mac.

Using Siri to add a reminder

Mushroom adds an "Add a Reminder" action to the Shortcuts app. Siri on the Mac cannot talk to an app's actions directly, that is a macOS limitation and not something an app can change, so a small shortcut acts as the bridge. Open Shortcuts, make a new shortcut, search the action list for Mushroom, add "Add a Reminder", and type what you want in the Reminder field (or leave it empty and it will ask). Name the shortcut something you would say out loud, such as "Nudge me". Now "Hey Siri, Nudge me" works. Mushroom does not have to be open, macOS wakes it quietly in the background to take the reminder.

Answering a reminder

Every nudge offers Done, Snooze, and Skip, both in the chat bubble and on the notification. Skip means "not this time" and is treated as an honest answer: it never affects your mushroom's mood. Ignoring a reminder entirely is the only thing that makes it droop, and one click on the recover button cheers it back up.

Chat

Chat is unavailable

Chat runs entirely on-device. On macOS 26 it uses Apple Intelligence, which needs Apple Silicon with Apple Intelligence switched on and is not offered in every region. On an Apple Silicon Mac running an older macOS, open Settings, Chat and pick a model to download once. Reminders, stats, the notepad, and everything else keep working without either. Mushroom needs an Apple Silicon Mac; it does not run on Intel Macs.

Data

Moving to another Mac

Settings, Data has Export and Import. Export writes a single file with your reminders, history, chat, and settings; import it on the other Mac. On the version downloaded from this site your license key lives in the Keychain and deliberately does not travel with the export, so enter it again on the new machine. On the Mac App Store version there is no key: install it on the other Mac from the same Apple Account and it is licensed already.

Using the download after buying on the Mac App Store

Install the version from this site and it recognises your App Store purchase on its own, so there is no key to enter and nothing to buy again. Your friends come with you. Your reminders, chat and history do not move on their own, because the App Store version keeps them inside its own sandbox folder: open Settings, License and use "Bring my reminders and chat across", then pick TamagotchiData.sqlite from the folder it opens. Keep the App Store version installed until you have done that.

Two things to know. A membership bought inside the App Store stays with the App Store version, so Friends and Spore Storage on the download need a membership from this site, or your own server. And the two are separate purchases in both directions: buying here does not refund the App Store, and buying there does not refund here.

Where is my data kept?

In one file on your Mac, under Application Support. There is no account and there are no analytics. Two things can ever leave your Mac, and both start switched off: a file you deliberately share with Spore Storage (Settings, Sharing), and a message you send a friend (Settings, Friends), which is locked on your Mac before it goes so our server can pass it on without being able to read it.

What does Mushroom connect to?

Only what a feature needs, and only for features you use. Weather looks the place up with Apple's MapKit and asks Apple's WeatherKit for the forecast. The daily quote asks ZenQuotes for the quote of the day, once a day. The news digest fetches the feeds you listed, straight from those publishers. A tool plugin calls the address written in its file. The version downloaded from this site also checks your license with Gumroad and looks for its own updates; the Mac App Store version does neither, because Apple handles the purchase and the updates. If you switch on Spore Storage, a file you drop on the pet is uploaded so it can be shared through a link. If you switch on Friends, messages travel through Mushroom's own server on Cloudflare, locked so it cannot read them, and Apple's push service tells your Mac a message is waiting when Mushroom is closed. Your chats, reminders, calendar events, and notes are never part of any of that: they stay on the Mac. Full details are in the privacy policy.

Mushroom asks for keychain access after an update

macOS ties keychain permission to an app's exact code signature, so a newly signed build has to ask once. Allow it and the question does not come back for that version.

Licensing

If you already bought Mushroom, nothing here changes for you. Friends and file sharing stay on, permanently, on whichever version you bought. Everything below about the membership is for people buying from now on.

If you bought Mushroom on the Mac App Store, the purchase is the license. There is no key to enter for the app and no trial to run out, and the app itself is yours for good. That version cannot be pointed at servers you run yourself, and it has no dark room nudge, because the sandbox it runs in has no access to the light sensor. Add-ons and skins do work there, once it knows you also bought Mushroom here, which takes one line in Terminal. The rest of this section is about the version downloaded from this site.

Mushroom is free to try for 7 days, and you do not need an account or a card. Everything is switched on from the first launch apart from two things, Friends and file sharing. Both panes say so. Settings, License shows how many days are left and has a buy button when you are ready.

When the trial runs out Mushroom goes to sleep in the menu bar. Your reminders, notes and everything else stay exactly where they are, and entering a license key wakes it all up again straight away.

Friends and file sharing

Those two send things between Macs, so they run on Mushroom's servers and cost money every month. For new buyers they come as a membership rather than as part of the purchase. Everything else in Mushroom is a one off purchase and everything on your own Mac keeps working whatever happens to the membership.

You can start one in the app: Settings, License. On the App Store version that is an in app purchase you cancel in the App Store whenever you like. If you bought a membership on this site and use the App Store version too, it works there as well, with your App Store purchase left exactly as it is, and you add it the same way you add a license key: one line in Terminal.

You can also run both features on a server you run yourself, which needs no membership at all. See the self hosting guide.

One license covers up to 5 devices, Macs and iPhones together. If a check ever fails because you are offline, Mushroom keeps working: it never locks you out over a network problem.

Command line activation

Mushroom licensing can also be managed through a command line interface built into the app. This is intended for activating Mushroom in an automated way, for example from a deployment tool such as Jamf or Munki, or from a script that runs at first login.

Each command verifies the key with the licensing service, applies it, and exits. Exit status is 0 on success and non zero on failure: 1 if the key was refused, 2 if the arguments were not understood, and 3 if the licensing service could not be reached, which is temporary and safe to retry. Nothing is stored unless the key was verified. Changes take effect the next time Mushroom starts.

/Applications/Mushroom.app/Contents/MacOS/Mushroom --help
/Applications/Mushroom.app/Contents/MacOS/Mushroom --license "licensecode"
/Applications/Mushroom.app/Contents/MacOS/Mushroom --membership "licensecode"

--license applies a Mushroom license key and --membership applies a Mushroom membership key. Run with no arguments, Mushroom starts normally.

Changelog

1.50.0

Your mushroom now grooves along to whatever is playing on your Mac, in Music, Spotify, or anywhere else. It nods, glances around, and little music notes float up with the track name tucked underneath. It reads only the play state and the title, nothing about your listening ever leaves this Mac, and it is on by default, with a switch under Settings, General if you would rather it held still. Direct download only for now, since it leans on a workaround for a private system API with no Mac App Store equivalent.

1.49.0

Settings, General has a new Look. Your mushroom can become a sphere of sparkling water, with bubbles rising inside it, that sloshes like a real liquid when you drag it around the screen. It is for days and desks where a cartoon pet is one question too many. Everything else behaves exactly the same, and switching back is one click: the color skin you picked is still waiting.

1.48.0

Nothing you delete from the Stash is really gone. There is a Deleted list now, on your Mac and on your iPhone, holding everything you have thrown away for as long as you like, and one tap puts anything back. Put something back on one device and it comes back on the others too.

Notes on a saved link are safer across two Macs. If you write a note on each while one of them is offline, both notes are kept when they meet, instead of the later one quietly replacing the other.

The Deleted list can also be emptied, one thing at a time from the list itself or all at once under Settings, Stash. That one really is permanent, so Mushroom asks first, and it empties the list on this Mac only: your other Macs keep theirs until you empty it there too.

On iPhone, tapping something in your Stash opens its details, anywhere on the row. It used to jump straight to Safari if you happened to hit the text, and only open the details if you hit the space beside it. Opening the page is a button inside, next to the note and the tags.

1.47.0

You can ask your mushroom about your reminders now. When is the next one, what do I have on Friday, how many hours until it, when was the last one. It answers from the reminders you set yourself, so it knows about those and nothing else, and it can answer even on a Mac with no language model at all. Ask in any of the five languages Mushroom speaks.

1.46.0

Black and white joined the Original Skins pack. They are greyscale rather than one more colour, so the mushroom sits quietly on a plain desktop, and the white one keeps its dark spots so you can still see them. If you already own the pack, both are waiting in Settings, Skins at no extra cost. The pack is still $1.99 excl. tax, and you can find it on the features page.

Keep chat history now does what it says. You could always pick how long to keep your chats in Settings, Chat, but nothing was ever cleared out. It is cleared out now, and there is a new 1 day option if you would rather your chats did not stick around at all.

Stash tags are editable, right where you see them. On the Mac the tags in the details pane are a field you can type in, and on your iPhone tags now show on each saved thing and can be changed when you open it. Searching picks them up too, so typing a tag brings back everything you filed under it instead of only the pages that happened to mention the word.

Fixed the chat opening on an empty pane when a reminder brought it up. Scrolling brought the conversation back, but nothing was ever lost, and now there is nothing to scroll back from.

1.45.0

Mushroom for iPhone is on the App Store. It is one app rather than two: buying Mushroom for Mac there covers the iPhone, and buying it on the iPhone covers the Mac. It carries your reminders, your Stash and your friends. The pet and the chat stay on the Mac, which is where there is room for them. To set it up, turn on Sync with iCloud in Settings, Data on the Mac and do the same on the phone: everything goes through your own iCloud account, and there is still no account of ours. Friends on the phone needs your licence, which the Mac hands over as a code you scan in Settings, Friends, and an active membership, or your own servers, the same as on the Mac. If your Mac uses its own servers, that code carries their addresses too, and the phone shows them and asks before it uses them.

One licence now covers five devices instead of three, so a phone can join without pushing one of your Macs out.

The browser extension is on the Chrome Web Store, so Settings, Stash offers a real install button again for Chrome, Edge and Brave. Firefox is still waiting on its review, and until then it is the "Set up by hand" button in the same place.

1.44.0

The browser extension is on its way to the Chrome and Firefox stores and is waiting on their reviews. Until it lands you can set it up by hand from Settings, Stash. Safari never needed it, since "Save to Mushroom Stash" is already in its Share menu.

Offline copies are reachable at last. Pick something in your stash to read the saved copy or show it in Finder, save a copy of any one thing from its right-click menu, and export every copy into a folder you choose, named by date and site so they sort the way you would expect. When you have no internet, opening something now opens the copy Mushroom kept rather than a page that will not load. New installs keep copies of the pages you open rather than everything, since a page runs to a few megabytes; search works the same either way.

Searching now covers everything you have saved rather than just the tab you were on, and the search shortcut opens your library.

1.43.0

New: the Stash, a place for the things you mean to come back to. Save a page from the menu bar, from any app's Share menu, from the browser extension, or with a Shortcut, and it lands in your Stash. Mushroom keeps a copy of the page, so searching looks inside what you saved and not just at its title, and tags narrow things down.

The pet can also dig something up for you. Turn on bringing things back in Settings, Stash, and it offers you a few things you saved and forgot about, either in the app or as a daily or weekly nudge.

If you already have a pile of links, you can import them in Settings, Stash, from Pocket, Raindrop, Instapaper, Pinboard, Anybox, or your browser's bookmarks. Anything Mushroom could not read is written to a file beside your data so you can see exactly what was skipped.

Offline copies are yours to control. "Keep offline copies" can hold every page you save, only the ones you open, or nothing at all, and you can clear the copies you no longer want at any time. Your saved items ride your existing iCloud sync if you want them to, and "Include your stash" lets you keep them on one Mac if your laptop is short on room.

1.42.0

Your friends can now follow you to your other Macs. Turn on "Use my friends on all my Macs" in Settings, Friends, and Mushroom keeps a copy of your messaging identity in your iCloud Keychain so your other Macs use the same one instead of making their own. The same friends, the names you gave them and your conversations are then waiting on every Mac you use, a message you send from one shows up on the others, and reading a conversation on one clears it everywhere. Your membership covers 5 devices.

This needs iCloud Keychain switched on, and it is off until you ask for it. Turning it off again stops new Macs picking your identity up, and the Macs you have already set up carry on working.

Right clicking Mushroom now offers "Quit Mushroom" as well, so you can close the app without going to the menu bar.

1.41.0

Fixed a bug where "Remind me before appointments" and the daily photo memory could switch themselves off on their own, usually after an update. Mushroom now tells the difference between you turning a permission down and macOS simply having forgotten it, and only the first one switches the setting off. If the permission has gone missing, Settings shows an "Allow access" button to get it back.

Settings, Data, Servers is now in the Mac App Store version too, so a company on either version can point Friends and file sharing at servers it runs itself.

Switching servers is steadier. If the switch cannot be saved, Mushroom now puts your Mac back exactly where it was and tells you why, and a Mac whose server addresses are set by a configuration profile gets a message that says so instead of one about the keychain.

If you already bought Mushroom, nothing here changes for you. Friends messaging and Spore Storage file sharing stay switched on, permanently, at no extra cost. You do not need to do anything and you will never be asked to.

Those two features send things between Macs, so unlike everything else in Mushroom they run on servers that cost money every month. For people buying from now on they come as a membership, USD 2.99 a month or USD 24.99 a year, on either the direct version or the Mac App Store. The app itself stays a one-time purchase, and everything that runs on your own Mac (reminders, chat, focus, stats, the notepad, the pet) is unaffected either way.

You can also run both features on your own server, which needs no membership at all. The server side is open source and the guides are in the selfhost folder of the app repository.

Two things on the version downloaded from this site. If you bought Mushroom once and later take the membership, that first purchase still counts: Settings, License can put you back on it whenever you like, and the app no longer sleeps if a membership stops. And if you bought on the Mac App Store, this version now recognises that purchase on its own, with a step in the same pane to bring your reminders and chat across.

The Mac App Store version now asks only for things bought from Apple, so its License pane has no key field on it. Keys from this site still work there, both the app license key that switches on add-ons and skins and a membership key for Friends and Spore Storage, and you give them once in Terminal instead. The steps are in Command line activation above. Skins need nothing downloaded, because every color already ships inside the app.

1.40.0

Mushroom now runs on macOS 15 and later, instead of macOS 26 and later. If your Apple Silicon Mac was too old for it before, it very likely is not now, and everything the app does apart from chat works exactly the same there.

Mushroom has always needed an Apple Silicon Mac, and from this version it no longer runs on Intel Macs at all. If you are on one of the few Intel Macs that could run macOS 26, stay on 1.39.0; write to us and we will send you that version.

Chat needed Apple Intelligence, which only exists on macOS 26. On a Mac without it you can now open Settings, Chat and download a small model once, and the pet talks using that instead. It stays entirely on your Mac either way, and nothing you type is ever sent anywhere. If you already have Apple Intelligence, nothing changes for you at all.

The notepad can now save itself as a plain text file. The button sits in its bottom left corner and asks you where to put the file.

On a Mac with a light sensor, the nudge for a dark room is now yours to set. Settings, Quiet shows how bright your room is at this moment, and you slide to choose the point where Mushroom speaks up, how long the room has to stay dark first, and how long it stays quiet afterwards. Every room and every sensor reads a little differently, so the old fixed setting was right for some people and never fired for others.

1.39.0

Every file you share through Spore Storage is now locked on your Mac before it is uploaded. The key that opens it travels in the link itself, in the part after the # sign, which no browser ever sends to a server. So the file sitting on our server is one we have no way to open, and the same is true of a server your own company runs. Nothing changes for the person you send it to. They open the link in a browser as before and the file unlocks itself there, as long as they have the whole link. If a link arrives with the part after the # missing, the page says so instead of handing over something that cannot be opened.

Friends now shows a safety number for each person you talk to, in the panel behind their name at the top of a conversation. Read it out to them on a call or in person, and if it is the same on both Macs then nobody is in the middle. This is what closes the one gap the encryption cannot close by itself: our server is what hands you a friend's key, so it is the one party that could hand you the wrong one. Mushroom also checks that the key it is given for someone really belongs to them, because a person's identity on the server is a hash of their own key. Once you have added a friend, their key can never quietly be swapped for somebody else's.

Your mushroom can ask how you are doing, every few hours, and you answer with one tap: good, okay, or low. Nothing about the pet changes whichever answer you pick, and skipping the question costs nothing, because there is no wrong way to feel. What you said collects in Stats as a count of the last seven days, with no conclusion drawn from it. Off by default, in Settings, Reminders.

You can start a focus session together with a friend. The timer button in a conversation starts yours and offers them one the same length. There is no shared session to join or leave: your friend's Mac simply runs a timer of its own, so if one of you closes the lid there is nothing to put right afterwards. An invite that arrives late is quietly dropped rather than starting a session that is already over.

Nudges can now wait while your microphone is in use, which covers the calls that never reach your calendar. Mushroom only asks the Mac whether the microphone is running, never what it hears, so this needs no permission of any kind. Held-back nudges arrive once the call ends. Off by default, in Settings, Notifications.

On a Mac with an ambient light sensor, which laptops have and desktops do not, Mushroom can notice that the room has gone dark around you and suggest putting a light on. It waits until it has been dark for a while, so a hand passing over the sensor is not enough, and it says something at most once every few hours. Off by default, in Settings, Notifications, and only on the version you download from this site.

Build 99 fixes a crash in that last one. In the first build of 1.39.0, switching the dark room nudge on could make Mushroom quit a few minutes later, while it was reading the light sensor. Nothing was lost when it happened, and it could only affect you if you had switched that setting on. Mushroom updates itself, so there is nothing to do.

Build 100 quiets a notification that should never have arrived. When a friend changed their status, took a message back, or invited you to focus together, your Mac could show a banner a few seconds later with nothing behind it, and opening it led to an empty conversation. Those three things are messages Mushroom carries out for you rather than shows you, and it was not telling the server it had dealt with them. It does now. The same build is better at working through messages that were waiting to go out after a long time offline.

Settings, Data can now save your reminder history as a spreadsheet, alongside the export of the whole database that was already there. The database export is the one for moving to another Mac; the spreadsheet is for anyone who likes to keep their own numbers.

1.36.0

Friends and file sharing can now use servers you run yourself. An organisation that will not put its files on someone else's infrastructure can run Mushroom's two small servers in its own Cloudflare account, so messages and shared files stay under its own contract and in its own region, or on hardware it owns outright. The server software is open source: github.com/qubit999/mushroom-selfhost.

Settings, Data, Servers is where the two addresses go. Both are required, both must be https, and Mushroom only uses them once you confirm the change, so nothing else on your Mac can point it somewhere quietly. While your own servers are in use, the Friends and Shared Files windows say so. One limitation worth knowing before you switch: on your own servers you are not notified while Mushroom is closed, because only Mushroom's own servers can send those notifications. Nothing is lost, though. Messages wait on your own server and arrive the next time you open the app.

Nothing changes for anyone who does not want it. Leave the setting alone and Mushroom behaves exactly as it did before.

The Apple Weather credit now sits wherever the weather does, in the chat window and next to the location setting as well as in About, and it shows the Apple Weather mark properly. It is always clear where a forecast comes from.

Add-ons are a direct download feature again. The App Store version no longer takes a license key for them, and does not use add-ons at all.

1.35.0

Focus sessions can start with an intention. Pick Focus, With an Intention in the menu bar, say what you are working on, and your mushroom keeps it beside them while you go. The four fixed durations still start a session in two clicks, exactly as before.

When a session ends, your mushroom asks how it went: focused, interrupted, or drained. One tap, and skipping it is a perfectly normal answer. You can turn the question off in Settings, Activity, Focus.

Stats has a new "Your focus lately" section. Once you have answered a few times it looks for patterns, like whether mornings suit you better than evenings, or which session lengths land best. It says nothing at all until there is enough to be sure of.

Mushroom now notices when nudges keep going unanswered at a particular time of day and offers to keep them quiet then. The suggestion appears in Stats with the reasoning next to it, and nothing changes unless you accept it.

All of this is worked out on your own Mac, from reminder history that was already saved there. Nothing is sent anywhere.

The message macOS shows when Mushroom asks for your calendar now spells out exactly what it reads. It always only checked whether something is on, and read the title and time of the appointments you asked to be reminded about, but the old wording did not say the second part. Nothing about what Mushroom reads has changed, only how plainly it is described.

Switching on Friends now gives you an example contact called DEMO, with a note explaining how it all works. It behaves like any other friend, so you can block it, report it, or delete it to try those out before you add a real person. Delete it and it stays gone.

Fixed: on a Mac where Friends or file sharing had never been set up, turning either on could fail with "I could not check your App Store purchase" and never recover, however long you waited. Mushroom now asks the App Store properly when you switch the feature on.

1.34.0

Clearing your status now really clears it. Empty the box, press Save, and it goes from your friends' Macs too. Before this it only disappeared on your own.

A friend's status is much easier to find. Rest the pointer on them in the friend list and it appears in place of their last message, or rest it on their name in a conversation and it appears just under the name. It used to be a tooltip, which almost nobody ever saw.

Typing in Japanese, Chinese or Korean works properly in Friends. Return finishes the word you are converting instead of sending it half written.

You can report a problem with someone from their info panel, next to Block. Blocking is still how you stop them; this is how you tell us.

Clearer answers when sharing or Friends cannot start. If something is broken on our side, Mushroom says so rather than suggesting you try again later.

A message now says Sent once it has left your Mac, and Delivered once your friend's Mac has it. Before this the caption simply vanished while you waited, which made a sent message look like nothing had happened.

The conversation keeps up the way it should. It follows along when a message arrives or your friend starts typing, stays exactly where you left it while you are reading something further up, and opens at the newest message instead of partway through.

1.33.0

A status for your friends. Set one from the gear at the foot of the friend list and the people you have invited see it when they point at your name, in the list or at the top of the conversation. Leave it empty and there is nothing to see. It travels the same way a message does, locked on your Mac before it leaves.

Longer messages are easier now: hold Shift and press Return for a new line, and the box grows as you type. The conversation also keeps up properly, whether a message lands or your friend starts typing, and it stays put when you have scrolled up to read something older.

Mushroom now follows the appearance and accessibility settings on your Mac. Dark mode looks the way it should, Reduce motion calms the pet's wandering and the animations down, Increase contrast firms up edges that were too faint, and Differentiate without color adds shapes and words wherever color alone used to carry the meaning, such as the activity map in Stats.

1.32.0

Friends. Invite one person with an 8 character code that works once and expires after a day, then send messages back and forth in a panel under the pet. There are no usernames and no directory, so a code is the only way anyone can reach you.

Messages are locked on your Mac before they leave it and opened on your friend's, so the server passes along something it cannot read. You can see when a friend is at their Mac and when they are typing, and switch both off in Settings, Friends. Blocking someone or deleting a conversation takes one click, and deleting clears those messages from the server too.

Sent something you would rather take back? Hover one of your own messages and unsend it: it goes from your Mac and from your friend's. Settings, Friends can also clear every message on this Mac at once while keeping your friends, so nobody has to be invited again. Links in messages are clickable now, and text you select in a bubble is easy to read.

1.31.0

Focus sessions. Pick a length from the menu bar, ask the pet in plain words ("focus for 45 minutes on the proposal"), or start one from Shortcuts. Mushroom holds its nudges back for the length of the session and wears a small countdown so you can see what is left.

When the time is up it suggests a break, and the session lands in Stats with a daily goal of its own and your focus time for the week. Anything held back arrives once the session ends, nothing is thrown away.

1.30.0

Mushroom is now free to try for 7 days, with everything switched on and no key needed. You can see how many days are left in Settings, License, and buy from right there.

You can also download the newest Mushroom straight from the website now, without going through checkout first.

1.29.0

Two little games, for when you need a break. Pong and Snake live in the menu bar under Games, and you can give them a keyboard shortcut in Settings, General.

Your mushroom knows where you are now. Ask "what's the weather?" without naming a place and it just answers. Type a home location in Settings, General, or switch on "use my location" and it will ask macOS for a rough, town level fix instead. Weather now comes from Apple's WeatherKit.

A hello at sunrise and again at sunset, off until you switch it on in Settings, General.

One inspirational quote every morning, at seven or whenever suits you. Also in Settings, General, and also off by default.

Your mushroom has its own notification sound now, and it is the one you will hear by default. If you preferred the old one, pick Standard in Settings, General. Reminders you set to silent stay silent either way.

Sharing files got a tune up. Dropping a batch no longer stops to check in after every file, so a group of files finishes sooner and the links come back quicker.

1.28.0

Text in the chat bubble can be selected and copied. Dragging across a message used to fling your mushroom across the screen, and now it does what you would expect instead.

Sharing tells you what is going on. Drop files on your mushroom and it says it is putting them in the cloud, then hands the links back in the chat bubble once they are up, with a button that copies all of them at once. The links still land on your clipboard the way they always did.

1.27.0

A quieter mushroom, if you want one. Settings, General now lets you choose where the pet lives: always on screen, only when it needs you, or hidden. Pick "only when it needs me" and your mushroom stays off the screen, appears when a reminder is waiting, then tucks itself away once you have answered. "Always" is the default, so nothing changes unless you choose otherwise, and you can still show the pet any time from the menu bar.

Reminders in the chat bubble are easier to read. The message gets its own line and wraps onto as many lines as it needs, so you see all of it instead of the first few words.

1.26.0

Sharing takes a handful at a time. Drop up to 10 files on your mushroom, or onto the Shared Files window itself, and they go up one after another with all the links landing on your clipboard together. Any kind of file works now, not just images and PDFs: zip archives, disk images, whatever you need to hand someone. Folders are the one thing it still cannot take.

Bigger room too. Files can be up to 95 MB, and you can keep 50 of them, up to 3 GB, shared at once. Settings, Sharing lists those limits and shows how much of your space is in use, so you can see it before you run into it.

1.25.0

Share a file. Turn it on in Settings, Sharing, then drop a file on your mushroom and it hands you back a link you can send to anyone. The link works for 24 hours and then the file is deleted. Anyone who has the link can download the file, so send it only to the people you mean to. Images, PDFs and text files, up to 50 MB each.

A new Shared Files window in the menu bar lists everything still live, from any Mac using your license, and deletes any of them on the spot. Sharing is off until you switch it on, and it is the only part of Mushroom that sends anything off your Mac.

Email scan has a window of its own. Pick Scan an Email in the menu bar and drop a suspicious message into the window that opens, or paste its raw source instead. The window works the same whether your pet is on screen or hidden, and everything still happens on your Mac: nothing is uploaded and no link in the message is ever opened. Dropping a message on your mushroom no longer scans it, because the pet now catches files to share instead.

1.23.0

Your mushroom can change color. Skins arrive as an add-on: drop the Original Skins add-on file into Settings, Add-ons, and a Skins tab appears with eight colors to pick from. Your pet changes the moment you choose one, and nothing is downloaded because every color is already in the app. The pack is $1.99 excl. tax, and you can find it on the features page. On the Mac App Store version, add-ons need your license key from this site given first, as described in Using a getmushroom.app key with the Mac App Store version.

Default Red is always in the list, so the mushroom you started with is one click away whenever you want it back. The color you pick stays on the Mac you picked it on. Skins come in packs, and each pack is separate: a later one brings its own add-on file and its own looks, and needs nothing else installed.

1.22.1

Repairs to iCloud sync. If you switched it on in 1.22.0, please update. Two Macs could end up disagreeing about your settings, your notepad or a reminder you had deleted, and the Mac that had been closed the longest could win the argument. Sync now keeps both notes when they differ instead of picking one, leaves settings you never changed alone, and a reminder you delete stays deleted.

Also fixed: old one off reminders no longer all go off at once when you first switch sync on, and a reminder you snooze on one Mac now arrives at its new time on the other one.

1.22.0

Mushroom can now keep your Macs in step. Turn on iCloud sync in Settings, under Data, and your reminders, contacts, notepad and settings stay the same on every Mac you use. It is off until you switch it on, and it uses your own Apple Account, so there is still no Mushroom account to make and no server of ours holding anything. Everything travels through your own private iCloud, which not even Apple reads into.

Some things stay put on purpose. Your conversations, your stats and where the pet sits on screen belong to each Mac, so a large screen and a small one can each keep the pet where it suits them. Backups work exactly as before and are unaffected, and switching sync off stops anything leaving your Mac at all.

1.21.0

Mushroom now has a Shortcuts action. "Add a Reminder" turns up in the Shortcuts app, so you can drop it into your own shortcuts and automations. It reads the time out of your sentence ("call Tom in 2 hours", "water the plants every Thursday at 6pm") without using Apple Intelligence at all, so it works on every Mac. If you leave the time out, it asks. Mushroom does not have to be open, macOS wakes it quietly in the background to take the reminder.

You can reach it from Siri too, with one bit of setup: make a shortcut around the action and name it something you would say, like "Nudge me". Siri on the Mac cannot talk to an app's actions directly, so the little shortcut is the bridge. There are step by step instructions under Reminders above.

1.20.0

Reminders you can type in yourself. The Reminders list now has a + button for writing a reminder straight into a form, and a pencil on every row for changing one you already made. It needs no Apple Intelligence, so custom reminders work on every Mac. Reminders can also repeat every few days or once a month on a day you pick, and each row shows when its next nudge is due. If you pick a day a month does not have, such as the 31st, that month nudges you on its last day instead, so you always get exactly one a month.

A new Pause Reminders item in the menu bar holds everything back for an hour, four hours, until tomorrow morning, or until you turn it back on, and the menu tells you it is on and until when. Your own reminders are held too, not just the built-in ones, and nothing is lost: anything held back arrives once the pause ends. A reminder you snoozed yourself still lands on time, because that is a moment you asked for.

The news digest now suggests Kagi News in place of the BBC. If you already picked your own feeds, nothing changes.

1.19.0

Email scan, a new add-on. Drag a suspicious message onto your mushroom, or copy it and use Scan Email from Clipboard, and it checks the sender, the links, and the attachments, then tells you plainly what it found: high risk, suspicious, or no warning signals. Everything is worked out on your Mac, nothing is uploaded, and no link in the message is ever opened. Drop the email-scan add-on file into Settings, Add-ons to switch it on.

1.18.0

Photo memories. Once a day your pet can show you an old photo, a gentle little look back. Turn it on in Settings, General, then pick an album like a family album, or leave it on This day to see a photo from years ago today. Mushroom only reads your photos, it never changes, deletes, or sends them.

1.17.0

Add-ons. You can now turn on extra, community made features by dropping an add-on file into Settings, Add-ons. An add-on file only names a feature to switch on and carries no code, so it can never contain a virus, and removing the file turns the feature off again. The menu bar menu is also tidier, with the website and help links grouped into a new Help and Info submenu.

1.16.0

News feeds can now be imported from an OPML file, so a list of feeds from another reader does not have to be typed in again, and stories from feeds that publish their dates in an older style keep those dates instead of arriving in the digest with none.

1.15.0

Appointment reminders: tick a calendar in Settings, Reminders, such as a shared family calendar everyone adds plans to, and your mushroom nudges you a set time before each appointment. Mushroom only reads the calendars you tick, it never changes anything, and because the shared calendar is already on your Mac there is nothing to sync.

1.14.0

Family video calls. Add the people you video call in Settings, People, and they get their own rows in the People panel next to your emergency contacts: one click starts a FaceTime call, and a pasted Zoom, Meet, or Teams link opens that room instead. There is also a new daily news digest: choose your own feeds in Settings, News, and once a day your mushroom reads out three to five headlines with a link to each story. The headlines are quoted word for word and never rewritten, and you can ask "what's the news?" at any time to get them on the spot.

1.13.0

Your mushroom can now read things out loud. Copy any text, press your new shortcut, and it reads it back (press it again to stop), with a speaker button on every chat message and in the notepad. Pick the voice and the speed in Settings, General. There is also a new People panel: list the people you would want to reach in a hurry in Settings, People, and a help button next to the pet opens big, readable rows where one click calls. Weather answers now add a short line about what to do, like taking an umbrella or finding some shade.

1.12.1

Fixes for the tool input boxes. Two tools that ask for the same thing, a latitude each, no longer show or overwrite each other's values, and a value pasted with a stray space or line break now saves instead of leaving the Save button stuck. Spaces and line breaks around a value are ignored wherever it is used, including values that were already saved or came in with an imported tool.

1.12.0

Ask the pet what time it is anywhere, for one place or for everyone on a call, and it works out delays like "in 3 hours" for you. Links in chat are clickable, and the tool gallery gained four gadgets: air quality, sunset, the next public holiday, and NASA's picture of the day.

1.11.0

Daily backups into a folder you choose, and optional quiet-during-calendar-events.

1.10.0

Per-habit trends, a this-week summary, and daily goal progress in the Stats window. First-run setup with goal-based starting points. This help page.

1.9.0

Skip as a third answer on every reminder. A Pause reminders switch for macOS Focus filters, separate from dimming. Per-reminder sound, active hours, and daily goals. Done and Snooze receipts in chat with a timestamp you can choose the shape of.

1.8.2

Break chores can be answered one at a time, so snoozing one brings back that same chore instead of skipping ahead.

1.8.1

Tidier numeric answers from tool plugins, and the pet stays exactly where you parked it, even past a screen edge.