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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.
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.
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.
macOS only offers Focus filters for apps in your Applications folder. Move Mushroom.app there and open System Settings again.
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.
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.
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 runs entirely on-device through Apple Intelligence, which needs macOS 26 on Apple Silicon with Apple Intelligence switched on, and is not offered in every region. Reminders, stats, the notepad, and everything else keep working without it.
Settings, Data has Export and Import. Export writes a single file with your reminders, history, chat, and settings; import it on the other Mac. Your license key lives in the Keychain and deliberately does not travel with the export, so enter it again on the new machine.
In one file on your Mac, under Application Support. There is no account and there are no analytics. The only thing that ever leaves your Mac is a file you deliberately share with Spore Storage, after switching it on yourself in Settings, Sharing.
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. Mushroom also checks your license with Gumroad and looks for updates. If you switch on Spore Storage, a file you drop on the pet is uploaded so it can be shared through a link. 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.
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.
Mushroom is free to try for 7 days. Everything is switched on from the first launch, and you do not need an account or a card. 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.
One license covers up to 3 Macs. If a check ever fails because you are offline, Mushroom keeps working: it never locks you out over a network problem.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 pay what you want from €1.99, here.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Daily backups into a folder you choose, and optional quiet-during-calendar-events.
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.
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.
Break chores can be answered one at a time, so snoozing one brings back that same chore instead of skipping ahead.
Tidier numeric answers from tool plugins, and the pet stays exactly where you parked it, even past a screen edge.