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Desk Gremlin
A tiny coworker that lives in the corner of your Mac
Most desktop pets just sit there. Desk Gremlin works: click it for notes, reminders that reach your iPhone, focus timers, and screen recordings — plus an opt-in AI that answers questions, searches all your notes, looks at your screen, and calls your MCP tools. Privacy-first by design: everything lives in a local SQLite file you can inspect, zero telemetry, and AI can run fully on-device via Ollama. Free. macOS 14+.
I’m Parth. I build small apps at BrandBox, mostly on nights and weekends.
Desk Gremlin started as a tiny creature that lives in the corner of your screen. I just wanted a quick place to jot down a note or set a reminder without breaking my flow. Somewhere along the way it developed a personality… and now it quietly judges me for having 40 browser tabs open.
Click it and you’ll find notes, reminders, a focus timer, and an AI assistant if you want one.
The AI was the part I was most careful about. It’s off by default, can run completely locally with Ollama, and everything it remembers lives in a single SQLite database on your Mac. There’s even a tab in the app where you can browse the database yourself. Nothing is secretly sent anywhere.
It’s completely free, comes with 24 built-in characters, and you can drop in your own artwork if you want to make it your own. The latest update added a proper chat window and MCP support, so it can use your own tools too.
I’m mostly curious: if you had a little desktop companion that was always there, what would you actually want it to do?
…or would you just spend the whole day poking it? That’s a perfectly valid answer too.
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About Desk Gremlin on Product Hunt
“A tiny coworker that lives in the corner of your Mac”
Desk Gremlin was submitted on Product Hunt and earned 3 upvotes and 1 comments, placing #143 on the daily leaderboard. Most desktop pets just sit there. Desk Gremlin works: click it for notes, reminders that reach your iPhone, focus timers, and screen recordings — plus an opt-in AI that answers questions, searches all your notes, looks at your screen, and calls your MCP tools. Privacy-first by design: everything lives in a local SQLite file you can inspect, zero telemetry, and AI can run fully on-device via Ollama. Free. macOS 14+.
Desk Gremlin was featured in Productivity (657.9k followers), Artificial Intelligence (475.6k followers) and Menu Bar Apps (12.3k followers) on Product Hunt. Together, these topics include over 266.8k products, making this a competitive space to launch in.
Who hunted Desk Gremlin?
Desk Gremlin was hunted by Parth Kadakia. A “hunter” on Product Hunt is the community member who submits a product to the platform — uploading the images, the link, and tagging the makers behind it. Hunters typically write the first comment explaining why a product is worth attention, and their followers are notified the moment they post. Around 79% of featured launches on Product Hunt are self-hunted by their makers, but a well-known hunter still acts as a signal of quality to the rest of the community. See the full all-time top hunters leaderboard to discover who is shaping the Product Hunt ecosystem.
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Parth Kadakia