--- title: "Codex pets: how to use them, and where to find more · Desktamer" description: "What Codex pets are, where to download thousands of them for free, how to add one to Codex, and how to keep one on your Mac, Windows or Linux desktop all day." image: "https://desktamer.com/blog/codex-pets/card-2acd79af.jpg" url: "https://desktamer.com/blog/codex-pets/" --- # Codex pets: how to use them, and where to find more 30 September 2026, by Taha Bozdemir, 6 min read In short - Codex pets are the little companions in OpenAI's Codex, now part of the ChatGPT desktop app. Type /pet to wake one. - Thousands more are free on codex-pets.net and Petdex, each a zip with a pet.json and a spritesheet. - To add one to Codex, unzip it into .codex/pets in your home folder, then choose Refresh in Settings, Pets. - To keep one on your desktop all day, even with Codex closed, use a pet app: Desktamer, OpenPets or Petdex Desktop. In May 2026, OpenAI gave Codex a pet: a little animated companion that floats above your windows and shows how your chats are going. People loved them, and within weeks there were thousands more on fan galleries, drawn by Codex itself or by hand. The format is open, so a Codex pet isn’t stuck in Codex. It can walk along the bottom of your screen all day. Everything here was checked on OpenAI’s docs, the galleries and the apps’ own pages on 30 September 2026. ![Pixel art: the Wizard conjures a glowing grid of sprite frames above a laptop, and Ember the baby dragon climbs out of it onto the desk.](https://desktamer.com/blog/codex-pets/cover-2acd79af.webp) ## What Codex pets are Pets [arrived in Codex](https://x.com/OpenAIDevs/status/2050275713824211041) on 1 May 2026, with eight to choose from: Codex, Dewey, Fireball, Rocky, Seedy, Stacky, BSOD and Null Signal. Since July, Codex has been part of the ChatGPT desktop app, and that’s where the pet lives now, on macOS and Windows. The pet floats above your other windows and shows [four states](https://learn.chatgpt.com/docs/pets): Running, Needs input, Ready and Blocked. Its bell opens your threads, and you can start a new chat from it by typing or speaking. It’s a status light with a face, there to tell you when Codex needs you. ## Turn one on in Codex - **Pick a pet:** open Settings, then Pets (or your profile menu, then Pets), and choose one. The size is under Customize. - **Show or hide it:** type `/pet`, or right-click the pet and choose Hide. - **Make your own:** Settings, Pets, Create pet. Codex opens a chat with its hatch-pet skill. Describe your pet, wait while it draws, then go back to Settings, Pets, choose Refresh, and pick it. - **In the terminal:** the Codex CLI shows pets too, with `/pets`, if your terminal can draw pictures (iTerm2 3.6 or later, or one with Kitty graphics or Sixel). Older guides say Settings, Appearance Pets had their own spot in Settings by September 2026. If a guide sends you to Appearance, look for Pets in the list instead. ## What a pet is made of A Codex pet is a folder with two files: - **`pet.json`**, which names it: an `id`, a `displayName` and a `description`. - **A spritesheet**, usually `spritesheet.webp`: every frame of every animation in one image, in a grid of 192×208-pixel cells, one animation per row. There are two layouts: | | Size | Rows | What’s new | | -- | --------- | ---- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | v1 | 1536×1872 | 9 | The original: idle, walking both ways, waving, jumping, and the rows Codex plays for each state | | v2 | 1536×2288 | 11 | Two more rows with sixteen directions, so the pet can look toward your pointer | Every pet Codex hatches now is v2, and its `pet.json` says `"spriteVersionNumber": 2`. The ChatGPT desktop app plays both. The Codex CLI and ChatGPT on the web only take v1 so far. To draw one yourself, see [how to make your own desktop pet](https://desktamer.com/blog/make-your-own-desktop-pet/), which goes through every row. To see whether a pet you have is put together right, drop it in our free [Codex pet checker](https://desktamer.com/tools/codex-pet-checker/): it plays every row and checks the pet the way Desktamer imports it. ## Where to find more | Gallery | Pets | Filter for v2 | How you get one | Terms | | ----------------------------------------- | ----- | ------------- | ------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------- | | [codex-pets.net](https://codex-pets.net/) | 3,369 | Yes | A zip, or `npx codex-pets add ` | Free, no login. Uploaders confirm they have the rights | | [Petdex](https://petdex.dev/) | 4,872 | Yes | A zip, or `npx petdex install ` | Pets belong to whoever made them, under the license they chose | | [CodexPets.net](https://codexpets.net/) | 842 | No | A zip | Personal, non-commercial use only | | [codexpet.top](https://codexpet.top/) | 258 | Labelled | A zip | CC BY-NC 4.0: no commercial use | The counts are from each gallery’s own page. Many pets appear on more than one. To add a gallery pet to Codex, make a folder for it in `.codex/pets`, in your home folder, and unzip it there, so you have `.codex/pets//pet.json`. On Windows that’s `C:\Users\\.codex\pets`. Then choose Refresh in Settings, Pets. The `npx` commands above do the unzipping for you, if you have Node.js. Fan art Many gallery pets are fan art of characters someone else owns. Galleries take them down when the owner asks, and some allow only personal use. Check a pet’s terms before you put it in anything you share or sell. ## Keep one on your desktop Codex’s pet is there for Codex: it’s out while the ChatGPT app is open, and it’s busy telling you about your chats. If you’d rather have a pet that walks along your screen all day, naps, and doesn’t care what Codex is doing, you need an app that plays Codex pets on the desktop. | App | Price | Systems | What your pet does there | | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------- | --------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | Desktamer | $9.99 once | Mac, Windows, Linux | Walks the bottom of your screen (and a Mac’s menu bar), naps, eats, and stars in a small idle RPG | | [OpenPets](https://openpets.dev/) | Free, open source | Mac, Windows, Linux | Roams your screens, with plugins for focus timers and reminders, and hooks for coding agents | | [Petdex Desktop](https://petdex.dev/download) | Free, open source | Mac, Windows, Linux | Floats on your screen and reacts to your coding agent | | [Petex](https://github.com/iebb/petex) | Free, open source | Mac, Windows | Runs from the menu bar or the tray, looks the way you drag it (v2 pets), and never goes online | | [Codex Pet for VS Code](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=DinohouseDigitalLLC.vscode-codex-pet) | Free to install | Wherever VS Code runs | Plays in a side panel of your editor | On Linux, the ChatGPT app is in preview, and its floating pet is documented only for macOS and Windows, so a desktop app is the way to have your pet out. ## Codex pets in Desktamer We make Desktamer, and Codex pets are its pets. There are four ways to bring one home: 1. **The Gallery tab** browses codex-pets.net inside the app. Sort by new or popular, filter by animals, creatures, people or objects, and bring one home in one click. 2. **Import from URL** takes a codex-pets.net pet page, or a direct link to a zip or a spritesheet. 3. **Drop it** on the Pets tab: a zip, a pet folder, or just the sheet. 4. **Already in Codex?** Pets in `.codex/pets` show up in Desktamer by themselves, and play from where they are. Hatch a new one in Codex and it’s on your desktop too. Then it lives with you. It walks the bottom of your screen, or the menu bar on a Mac. It waves when you hover over it, jumps when you click it, naps on its “Failed” row and eats on its “Running” one. A v2 pet turns to look at your pointer. It gets hungry and tired, slowly, and grows fond of you, up to five hearts. And it can join your party in Quest, a small idle RPG where your pets are the heroes. ![The Wizard and Luck the cat standing at the bottom of a Mac desktop. A coin in a speech bubble floats over Luck.](https://desktamer.com/blog/codex-pets/pets-on-the-desktop.webp) The Wizard and Luck, both Codex pets, on our desktop. The coin is gold Luck saved up in Quest: tap it to take it now, or it comes in when you open Quest. You can [try a pet on this site](https://desktamer.com/#pets) first: drop a Codex spritesheet in the box on the home page and it walks out onto the page. **Free tool:** [Codex pet checker](https://desktamer.com/tools/codex-pet-checker/). Drop in a Codex pet to watch every row play, check it the way Desktamer imports pets, fix rows that run backwards, and save a GIF. **Desktamer** puts pixel pets on your Mac, Windows or Linux desktop. [Meet them](https://desktamer.com/) Desktamer is made by [Taha Bozdemir](https://tahabozdemir.com/) at [Bold Biscuit](https://boldbiscuit.com/). Questions and bug reports go to . ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "BlogPosting", "@id": "https://desktamer.com/blog/codex-pets/#post", "headline": "Codex pets: how to use them, and where to find more", "description": "What Codex pets are, where to download thousands of them for free, how to add one to Codex, and how to keep one on your Mac, Windows or Linux desktop all day.", "url": "https://desktamer.com/blog/codex-pets/", "mainEntityOfPage": "https://desktamer.com/blog/codex-pets/", "datePublished": "2026-09-30", "dateModified": "2026-09-30", "inLanguage": "en", "image": "https://desktamer.com/blog/codex-pets/card-2acd79af.jpg", "author": { "@type": "Person", "@id": "https://tahabozdemir.com/#person", "name": "Taha Bozdemir", "url": "https://tahabozdemir.com/" }, "publisher": { "@type": "Organization", "@id": "https://boldbiscuit.com/#organization", "name": "Bold Biscuit", "url": "https://boldbiscuit.com/", "logo": "https://boldbiscuit.com/logos/logo_black_bb.png" }, "about": { "@id": "https://desktamer.com/#app" } } ```