Buddy — friends living at the edge of your screen

This feature is still being prepared. It runs in the desktop app and ships with an app update when it is ready. The rules below describe how it works once open.

Buddy is a small pixel character that lives at the edge of your desktop. One friend is one character, so you can see who is around without opening a window. The characters float above your desktop but never swallow your clicks — only the characters themselves react, and everything else goes to the window underneath.

• Friends walk along the edge of your screen as pixel characters
• Presence shows through how they move
• Short messages appear as bubbles above their heads
• One shortcut key lets you reply right away

Away is decided by the desktop app only. The app looks at when the last input happened, never at what you typed or clicked.

Presence is visible to friends only. People who are not your friends never learn whether you are online.

1. 1Press the shortcut and a composer opens near the top of the screen
2. 2Type a message and press Enter to send
3. 3Press Shift with Enter to add a line break
4. 4Press Esc to close — your draft is kept

The shortcut works even while you are gaming or working full screen. After sending, the composer stays open so you can keep talking, and closing it returns focus to whatever you were using.

Bubbles are for short lines. Continue longer conversations in the messenger window — it is the same conversation, so both sides show the same thing.

Everything is reachable from the Cigather icon in the menu bar (on Windows, the tray at the right of the taskbar). You do not have to memorise the shortcut, and when another app has taken that key combination you can still open Buddy here.

Settings has the same switches plus how many friends to show at once. These are stored on this computer only — your work machine and home machine can be arranged differently.

You start with a few characters already available. More characters, bubbles and throwables can be bought in the point shop. Once bought they stay yours, and prices differ by tier.

• The starter characters work without buying anything
• Change it any time from Choose character in the tray menu
• Characters, bubbles and throwables are sold in the shop
• Throwables are not consumables — buy once and throw as often as you like
• You can also submit a character you drew to the market, after review

Click a friend's character to throw something you own. The character that gets hit pauses briefly and then walks on. Everyone sees the same scene, but positions are computed on each screen, so different screen sizes still look right.

Skills are bigger effects that play for a whole conversation at once. They cost points each time you use one — you do not stock them up. Price and the wait before the next use are tuned by operators, so check the value shown on the button before firing.

Everyone in that conversation sees a skill. To keep it from being spammed, one use locks it briefly for that room and for you.

Buddy is captured by whatever records your screen. When a live broadcast is detected, message text is hidden automatically and only the fact that something arrived is shown.

You can also receive your viewers' chat through Buddy while live. It has to be enabled in the channel settings; nothing is relayed until you turn it on.