June 25th, 2024

Ball: A ball that lives in your dock

A GitHub project named "Ball" by Nate Parrott offers a small interactive ball in the dock. Users can drag, swipe, flick, and bounce it on the screen. Inspired by Nate Heagy's widget, it credits Wessley Roche for dock position determination. Access via GitHub Releases.

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The GitHub project "Ball" by Nate Parrott features a small ball that resides in the dock, allowing users to interact with it through actions like dragging, swiping, flicking, and bouncing it on the screen. Inspired by Nate Heagy's OS X Dashboard widget, the project acknowledges Wessley Roche for sharing a Gist detailing how to determine the dock's position. To access the project, interested individuals can download it from the Releases section on GitHub. For additional details or inquiries regarding this project, please don't hesitate to ask.

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83 comments

By @jb1991 - 4 months

We’ve been using this in production for the last three months and I can report it has been fairly smooth overall. Only very minor downtime, and we’ve received a lot of communication from our customers about it, they like it quite a bit. So that’s been nice.

By @pomian - 4 months

This reminds me of a Lara Croft desktop(?) Screensaver? She climbed onto the window's edges -that were open on your windows screen, rolled, jumped, etc. Sometimes made a comment about you not having cleaned up your desktop. It was a small executable, than ran with or without sound. It wasn't very random, but it made for an interactive mind distraction on a rough day. She also walked across the bottom of the screen, out to the right (eg), then you would hear her walking, and eventually she would show up on your left of the screen. Fun little thing with no particular purpose.

By @aresant - 4 months

This is awesomely reminiscent of the old school 68k macintosh era - dogcow, oscar the grouch in the trash can, etc

I miss that simplicity / playfulness / aesthic of that era (yes I am old, please get off my lawn)

By @albert_e - 4 months

I want widgets on Windows desktop as well.

I want clock, calendar, notes, CPU and system stats, pull out or slide out menus with shortcuts, quirky ones like this one.

Instead what I have is ads.

And copilot everywhere.

With touch screen laptops today you can do so much more. My levono also folds 360 and let's me use it as a full touch screen desktop. There is so much potential for productivity hacks and interactive UX ideas if Windows customization and widgets ecosystem was alive and thriving.

By @Wowfunhappy - 4 months

Fwiw, here is the old Dashboard widget this is based on, for anyone else on an OS old enough to run it. It was a little annoying to dig out of the internet archive.

https://web.archive.org/web/20110301011442/http://gogoredbal...

By @riccardomc - 4 months

I guess the duty of mentioning Neko befell on me this time:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neko_(software)

By @ryanmcbride - 4 months

I don't have any hard proof but you can ask my wife, a few years ago I totally called that bonzibuddy was gonna come back in style. We're almost there

By @yakito - 4 months

At the moment of writing this I have no clue what my wallpaper is. I can't remember when was the last time I actually saw my desktop or interacted with it. I am not sure if this ball will also bounce on top of opened windows, but the whole thing made me think about the need for the desktop at all or how it could be made more useful.

By @floatrock - 4 months

> It's a ball. It's fun. It's a ball.

All that's missing is about 3 more README's of warnings and disclosures ending with "Do not taunt Ball." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmqeZl8OI2M

By @amethyst - 4 months

I still miss my desktop sheep every once in a while: https://github.com/Adrianotiger/desktopPet?tab=readme-ov-fil...

Edit: the best part was running it a couple dozen times to get an entire flock walking, falling, and rolling all over your desktop, and watching everything grind to halt under CPU strain!

By @shaan7 - 4 months

Reminds me of Plasma's ball widget: https://store.kde.org/p/1172489/

Apart from amusement, this served as a nice example when you are giving talks at universities trying to motivate students to tinker. Just multiple gravity by -1 and voila!

By @koliber - 4 months

You know what would be cool? If I could throw my ball into your dock. And then it's yours. You can throw it back to me.

By @CodeWriter23 - 4 months

Exactly the kind of content I come to HN for.

I wish someone would resurrect the Das Blinkenlights Mac screensaver. I think it was frozen in the Power PC age.

By @hot_gril - 4 months

He mentions the old Dashboard ball widget. There was a glitch you could use to put widgets onto your desktop instead, so naturally every school Mac had 20 bouncy balls on it.

By @alsetmusic - 4 months

I remember Docklings, a feature of early OSX that let devs put mini-apps in the Dock. I had one showing uptime, undoubtedly just piping the output from the CLI command. That was one of the early steps toward my interest in the CLI, which still wouldn’t be realized for a handful of years. This is a great throwback with more capability than those had. Very cool.

By @proee - 4 months

Does anyone know of any similar ideas for an interactive animals/pets for your desktop?

This is the best thing I could find so far to put on an extra monitor. Note you can click to interact with the penguins and also feed them.

https://www.petpenguins.com/

By @Reason077 - 4 months

> "It's inspired by Nate Heagy's widget for the OS X Dashboard"

Bring back the Dashboard, Apple! The original Dashboard was dropped because of it's shaky technology foundations, but the UX was fantastic and much better than the widgets buried in the notification centre or cluttering the desktop that we have today.

Now that we have modern native Widgets on macOS X, they need a place where they can thrive, and look cool, and be quickly accessible. Dashboard!

By @pavel_lishin - 4 months

I remember having these kinds of desktop toys in Windows, way back when, probably 95 or 98? Just a little joyful thing you could play with. This rules.

By @crooked-v - 4 months

I'm suddenly reminded of the Petz series. I'm surprised that's never come back in some form.

By @papa0101 - 4 months

Ah, reminds me of my intro to maths and trig in the good old Flash days! https://www.kirupa.com/developer/as3/physics_bounce_effect_p...

By @TomMasz - 4 months

There is still room for a bit of whimsy in computing. Anything to combat the flood of doom is welcome.

By @leokennis - 4 months

This will get Sherlocked by Apple in 5 years time. DockBall Pro Max.

By @neom - 4 months

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlAhRJjOhDg

First time I saw that Amiga ball bounce, mind = blown.

By @luke_abell - 4 months

Strangely reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BumpTop

By @michaelmilst - 4 months

Speaking of ball, check out https://www.moveball.org/

By @dizhn - 4 months

I read the description of the product and came away with the feeling that it's safe to say it's a ball.

By @anbardoi - 4 months

As cool and fun as this is, the OP is honestly one of my favorite developers. The app “Feeeed” on iOS is such a game-changer of an RSS reader, and any feedback I’ve had in the past, he’s responded promptly and respectfully. Glad to see this trending on HN.

By @palad1n - 4 months

What if your dock is on the side of the screen? Or do I need to install it and see for myself?

By @nayuki - 4 months

It reminds me of the Easter egg in Cool Edit Pro (audio editor): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgPTxXiHvI4

By @coldblues - 4 months

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QokOwvPxrE

Speaking of fun desktop toys, Compiz effects used to be wild.

By @behnamoh - 4 months

This is why I visit HN! A fucking ball on my dock---this made my day.

By @jari_mustonen - 4 months

A bug: The ball guesses the location with multiple monitors based on a finder window. If the dock and the Finder window are in separate displays, the ball does not work.

By @fanf2 - 4 months

Reminds me of playing around with the WIMP on an Acorn Archimedes in about 1990, making a trivial app in BBC BASIC V that put a bouncing ball on the icon bar. Good times.

By @helboi4 - 4 months

I need more recommendations to make my computer (mac) silly

By @Weryj - 4 months

It's an effective way to get your laptop in Game Mode, unless you right click-quit, it's detected as a game in focus.

By @soared - 4 months

This reminds me of rainmeter, but for fun instead.

By @overshard - 4 months

Fun fidget utility! I find myself just mindlessly clicking stuff sometimes while I think and this gives me a little bit more to do.

By @sloproth - 4 months

I love this. I think I'll just keep this app open at all times so I always have a little ball on screen. :)

By @kevpie - 4 months

I was going to say this sounds like Go Go Red Ball. Wonderful to see the nod to Nate Heagy in the repo!

By @MollyRealized - 4 months

I feel it's worth warning as to a concern, though: Do Not Taunt Happy Fun Ball.

By @krylon - 4 months

If I was still using a Mac as my desktop, my productivity would be completely gone now. =D

By @teaearlgraycold - 4 months

Love it. Only thing missing is multi monitor support. I want the ball to go across screens.

By @ianpenney - 4 months

Does anyone else think this is the least important distraction to real hackers today?

By @InDubioProRubio - 4 months

But can you drop it in the bin?

By @dwighttk - 4 months

DO NOT TAUNT BALL

By @drowntoge - 4 months

This desperately needs a hoop or a bin to aim for, then it's golden.

By @BWStearns - 4 months

Do not taunt happy fun ball.

By @ashton314 - 4 months

I love the bouncy sounds! Thank you for adding a little whimsy to my day.

By @ananya_paw - 4 months

I don't know what's the use case, but it like it already

By @dayjah - 4 months

Looks cool, but I just can’t justify the subscription cost.

By @crmd - 4 months

I like this, it reminds me of xeyes and similar early UI toys.

By @lnxg33k1 - 4 months

Do you know how much it costs RAM on a macbook

By @perryizgr8 - 4 months

Reminds me of a toy that would let you break/destroy the screen with a variety of tools like hammer, drill, bomb, etc.

By @kome - 4 months

Finally something useful!!! i love it

By @agrimonyhal - 4 months

Finally an app Apple won’t Sherlock

By @PedroBatista - 4 months

Now compare this with Apple's 90min multi million dollar bi-yearly recorded presentation where Tim Apple & friends lobotomize the credulous consumers...

'member when computers used to be fun?

By @swayvil - 4 months

I've always wanted a ball.

By @Borgorg - 4 months

so simple, yet one of the best things to happen to my desktop ever

By @CRConrad - 4 months

Idunno exactly why, but the headline feels somehow slightly smutty.

By @Beijinger - 4 months

Thats a nasty headline. I first read cock instead of dock. Sorry.

By @pedrogpimenta - 4 months

I like ball. Almost makes me regret moving to Linux a year ago

By @docstryder - 4 months

Such a delightful thing

By @jwr - 4 months

The spirit of xeyes lives on! I'm happy to see that.

By @th0ma5 - 4 months

Why are physics engines still so unrealistic?

By @Rakshith - 4 months

is there one for windows?

By @yashbindal - 4 months

What's this about

By @bcardarella - 4 months

I read that title wrong

By @TristanBall - 4 months

Pfft. Let's talk about the rent before announcing where I live eh?

By @lxgr - 4 months

Amazing! Now to get this approved as business critical software at work... :)

By @867-5309 - 4 months

for Apple OS

By @pkstn - 4 months

But why?

By @flerp - 4 months

I love it

By @doawoo - 4 months

honestly perfect. no notes.

By @findthebug - 4 months

love it.

By @notarealllama - 4 months

Ball is life

By @rubymamis - 4 months

Why does it only run on macOS 13+?

By @aitchnyu - 4 months

Boring. There was/is a Linux dock which was main demo of a physics engine. We could toss icons which would bounce off screen corner and land in some part of the dock. You never know what order your icons are in.

Dont forget to notice how old the video is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSZtTo1lXP8

Electromechanical Lunar Lander

The author created an electromechanical Lunar Lander game in 2016 for an interactive show. It replicated arcade mechanics with a kickball moon surface, controlled spaceship, and shared project code.

Ball: A ball that lives in your dock

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