Formiga
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A desktop companion for macOS & Windows
I made Formiga for a bit of company while I work. It's a group of little creatures that wander around your windows, chase each other, and sometimes fall asleep in a pile. Over a few weeks, they'll build a village in the corner of your screen.
drag the windows · click a creature
Monday
Formiga Desktop the colony
Your colony wanders around the desktop while you work. Your windows give them places to walk, sit, and play. Stop to pet a creature, or leave them to spend time together.
Formiga draws each creature as it's created, with its own shape, face, colors, and personality. Each one has a code, called a seed, that you can save or share. Send it to a friend and they can meet the same creature on their computer.
Here are 100 creatures, just as Formiga made them. I haven't picked out favorites. Hover to look closer.
They walk along the tops of windows and ride along when you move one. They'll hop to the next window, squeeze through a gap, or stop on a ledge to consider a long jump. Click one to pet it, or drag it to a better spot. You can give it a little toss, too.
Others are friendly, mischievous, or fond of showing off. Their personalities shape how they get along, and how you treat them can slowly change that. They'll make friends, play tag or hide-and-seek, and settle down for a picnic or a nap.
Over time, the colony builds up to six houses in a corner of your screen. You can move them around, change how they look, and watch the gardens grow. Friends drop by to visit. If you like how it's looking, you can send someone a postcard.
The journal keeps track of what happens, and the Today page catches you up when you come back. A notebook records observations about the colony and explains what they're based on. There are also 160 keepsakes to find along the way.
Create a new creature, use a photo's colors and shapes to inspire one, or invite a friend's creature for a day. Photos are processed on your computer.
Choose where they can wander, pause or hide them, and reduce their movement. You can schedule the Work and Relax settings around your week.
You can keep your colony when you update Formiga. I want you to keep the creatures you've grown attached to as I continue working on the app.
Go to Formiga Hill…
The little green train takes your colony from the desktop to Hill's station. Everyone rides together in the two passenger cars and comes home when you're done.
Formiga Hill the destination Coming soon
I'm building Hill as a separate app for trips with your colony. There's a village green, a clubhouse for stories, a fairground, and woods to explore. The creatures come with you from the desktop, with the same personalities and habits you've come to know.
Visit when you feel like it. The colony doesn't need you to keep checking in.
A parent saves its little one for last in hide-and-seek. A show-off might stop to wave during a race and get overtaken.
Your colony returns to the desktop after a visit, with souvenirs from the trip recorded in the journal.
I've included a few stories for the clubhouse. You can add your own, too: write one in a plain text file and save it in Hill's stories folder.
Formiga Home the dollhouse In the workshop
I'm working on a dollhouse you can open from the houses in your desktop village. You'll be able to rearrange the furniture, put their finds on a shelf, and spend time with whoever lives there. These rooms show how it's coming along.
Try the buttons to see the different finishes.
Formiga doesn't switch you away from the app you're using. You can click through to your windows as usual, unless you click directly on a creature.
I'm working to keep Formiga's use of your computer low: under 1% of processing power when the colony is resting, and under 100 MB of memory. I publish performance measurements with the code.
Formiga uses the positions of your windows and pointer, and how long your computer has been idle. It doesn't read window names or contents, take screenshots, or collect usage data. You can turn off its daily check for updates.
Formiga keeps a backup of your saved colony. Your creatures and their seed codes carry over when you update. Keeping the colony you've spent time with matters to me.
Ticket office
Start with Formiga Desktop. Hill and Home are still in development, and will both need Desktop when they're ready.
These early versions aren't digitally signed yet, so your computer may show a warning when you first open Formiga. Here's how to open it on your computer.
.dmg file and drag Formiga to Applications..msi installer.
If you'd like to check that your download is complete and unchanged, its checksum
(a .sha256 file) is beside it on
the download page.
Formiga checks for updates once a day, unless you turn that off. It never installs an update on its own.
Feedback
I'd like to hear how Formiga is working for you. Tell me about something you enjoyed, a problem you ran into, or an idea you'd like to see.