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HomePlay
Live Activities
Up to three at once: timers, music, messages, ClioTalk and FaceTime calls. You can switch off each app in Settings.
PreviewHomePlay 2.0
All of HomeView. On your Mac.
HomeView is Apple’s small screen for the home. HomePlay turns it into a desk pet on your Mac. 1.0 has a pair of eyes that watch you, and it also takes CarPlay from your iPhone. 2.0 adds the full HomeView interface: a Home Screen with widgets, ten faces, sixteen apps, ClioTalk (a voice assistant), and family recognition.
Preview: in development, not released. The app captured every screen here with demo data.
What’s new in 2.0
A Liquid Glass Home Screen. Liquid Glass is Apple’s see-through glass style. Here, macOS draws it.
Ten faces, including 1988. The Island face can switch era. The capsule with 👀 changes to that era’s look.
ClioTalk asks first. It reads aloud anything it will send in your name. It sends only after you say OK.
Live Activities show in the capsule. Progress for timers, music, messages and calls sits next to the eyes.
It knows who is home. Face recognition runs on the Mac. Each person has their own Home Screen.
Control Center. Swipe down from the top right to open it.
Home Screen
The iPhone Home Screen’s rules, arranged your way.
Hold for half a second and the icons jiggle. Drop one icon on another to make a folder. Widgets of the same size can form a stack called a Smart Stack. It shows the right widget on top for the time of day.
Four appearances, like iPhone.
Widgets in four sizes. 2×1, 2×2, 4×2 and 4×3. There are twelve kinds: Photos, Weather, Calendar, Reminders, Music, Podcasts, Home, World Clock, Timers, Alarms, Find My and Batteries.
Edit while the icons jiggle. Tap − to remove an item. Tap + to add a widget. You can add pages too. Tap Done when you finish.
App Library. It is the last page. Every app is sorted by category, and you can search.
At a glance
What is happening now sits next to the eyes.
A timer, a song or a new message shows its progress on either side of the 👀 capsule. Tap to expand. It shrinks back on its own. Swipe down from the top right to open Control Center.
Control Center
It has Now Playing, volume, brightness, a focus timer, Guest mode, the follow-me camera and CarPlay. Volume sets the Mac’s output. Brightness dims only the pet’s screen. Focus is a Pomodoro timer.
Faces
Ten faces. The same 👀 on every one.
Photos, Modular, Typograph, Flow, Weather, Calendar, Days Together, Black, Island, and System 6 from 1988. Touch and hold the screen to switch.
The Island face, in three eras
Pick 1988, 2002 or 2026. The capsule changes to that era’s look: black-and-white pixels, Aqua’s blue jelly, today’s glass. The eyes do not change.
Apps
Sixteen built-in apps, one job each.
Weather, Clock, Music, Messages, Home, Safari and more. All of them use HomeView’s layouts. The type is big, so you can read it from across the room.
Messages. Reply by voice. The Mac turns your speech into text. Before it sends, it reads the message to you and waits for your OK.1
World Clock, Timers, Alarms. These are three apps. You can run several timers at once. The countdown shows in the capsule.
Music and Podcasts. They have synced lyrics, AirPlay output and Up Next. Lyrics come from LRCLIB. The app sends only the title, artist and length. You can turn this off.
Safari and Start Cooking. Drag in a recipe page, paste it, or copy it from your iPhone. It becomes a step-by-step recipe in big type. Tap a time in a step to start a timer.
Home. Control lights, scenes and locks through HomeKit.2
FaceTime. Pick a person on the pet. FaceTime on your Mac places the call. You press call.
Find My. It shows this Mac on an approximate map. For other devices and Play Sound, it opens Find My on the Mac.
Intercom. Hold to talk, up to 30 seconds. The sound plays on the Mac, or on the AirPlay speaker you pick in Control Center.
Photos. Widgets and faces can show photos. Pick shared albums in Settings. Personal content is for the Mac’s owner only.
ClioTalk
Just ask. It does not speak for you.
ClioTalk is HomePlay’s voice assistant. Swipe down from the top centre of the screen, or hold F5, and talk. The Mac turns your speech into text, and only the text goes to the AI model.
Use your own key. Your Anthropic or DeepSeek key stays only in the Keychain. You can also run a model on your Mac with LM Studio, or use the on-device Apple Intelligence model on macOS 26 or later.
You set the spending limit. The default is five US dollars a month. At the limit, it stops. It never charges more.
It does not speak for you. Messages, reminders and events sent in your name need your OK.
Family and privacy
It knows who is looking, and keeps private things private.
Turn on the follow-me camera and Recognise People. HomePlay then uses Apple Vision on the Mac to recognise your family, say good morning and switch to your Home Screen. This is off by default.
It runs on the Mac. It stores only numbers that describe a face. It stores no photos and writes nothing to logs.
Up to six people. The first is the Mac’s owner. To enrol, look at the camera, then turn your head a little to each side.
Guests do not see private things. People it does not recognise, and Guest mode, see only the default Home Screen. Messages, photos and calendars are for the owner.
More
Turn a spare iPhone or iPad into another HomeView. Switch it on in Settings › iPhone & iPad. Scan the QR code with Safari and enter a one-time pairing code. It stays on your home network, and the traffic is encrypted. A new device joins as a guest. This is off by default.
CarPlay is still here. HomePlay began as a CarPlay receiver on the Mac. Connect a cable the first time. After that, it works wirelessly. Press firmly on the screen to enter CarPlay.
The system draws the glass. HomePlay uses macOS Liquid Glass (NSGlassEffectView), tuned to measurements from the iOS 27 simulator. Where the system lacks it, HomePlay draws its own glass.
Three languages. Traditional Chinese (Taiwan), Simplified Chinese and English. The app and this site have all three.
Open source. The licence is GPL-3.0-or-later. All the source code is on GitHub.
A history of widgets. It runs from the Calculator in the 1984 Apple menu to today’s Live Activities, with twelve exhibits you can play with.
Read the history
Preview
This is a Preview. Here are the limits.
2.0 is still in development. It is not released. These are the limits today.
- It needs macOS 14 or later on Apple silicon. Liquid Glass, on-device speech and on-device models are complete only on macOS 26 or later.
- ClioTalk with a cloud model needs your own Anthropic or DeepSeek key.
- The apps on your Mac complete FaceTime and Find My. Intercom plays on the Mac or an AirPlay speaker. It is not HomePod Intercom.
- Face recognition uses general image features. It is not biometric-grade security.
- iPhone and iPad show a web page, not an app. The Mac must stay awake. You must set the device not to auto-lock.
Use 1.0 now. 2.0 is coming.
v1.0.2 is ready to download: macOS 14 or later on Apple silicon, signed with Developer ID and notarised by Apple. The progress of 2.0 is on GitHub.