It’s 2025, and the era of desktop anime girls is well and truly upon us. Thanks to the latest entry in this unlikely trend, you can even hire Hatsune Miku herself to hang out on your taskbar while you go about your daily desktop work.
Desktop Mate hit Steam on January 7, with developer infiniteloop billing it as a “next-generation desktop mascot platform that brings cute characters to your computer.” The basic app is free, and adds an original anime girl, animated in 3D, to your desktop. You can have her sit on your taskbar, or on top of a window. You can rub your mouse cursor to give her headpats. You can… move her around. And I’m really starting to run out of features to describe here.
The free app has launched with one piece of DLC, which is a $15 add-on that adds vocaloid megastar Hatsune Miku to the roster of desktop anime girls. She doesn’t do anything more than the other girl does – neither character has a voice, which seems a bit odd when you’ve got a vocaloid star in your roster – but hey, it’s Hatsune Miku.
While I got bored about five minutes after installing Desktop Mate, it’s quickly gaining traction, with 295 89% positive reviews and a peak concurrent player count of 6,230 according to SteamDB. Those aren’t exactly Palworld numbers or anything, but it does show the undeniable power of a desktop waifu. The trend that VPet-Simulator seemingly kicked off isn’t ending yet.
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