Ark-Pets: Arknights characters on your Windows desktop, driven by Spine models
Arknights Desktop Pets | 明日方舟桌宠 (ArkPets)
At a glance
- What is it?
- Ark-Pets is a Java desktop pet application for Arknights characters, built on libGDX and Spine, that runs the game's base-building animations as a small physics-driven figure on the screen. It ships as a Windows installer, a portable zip and a jar for JDK 17 users, and it depends on a separate community model repository for its content.
- Who is it for?
- Ark-Pets suits a Windows user who plays Arknights and wants the base-building characters on their desktop, since the physics behaviour, the window interactions and the model search are all implemented and the model content is maintained separately so it can grow without the application changing.
- Can I use it commercially?
- Yes, with conditions. GPL-3.0 is a copyleft licence: if you distribute software that includes it, you must release that software's source code under the same licence. Running it internally without distributing it does not trigger that obligation.
- Is it still maintained?
- Yes. The repository last received commits 27 days ago.
- What is it written in?
- Mainly Java, according to GitHub's language statistics.
Answers come from the project's GitHub data, last synced on October 22, 2026, and from our analysis. They are not legal advice.
Editorial analysis
A pet that behaves like the game's base builder
Ark-Pets is described as Arknights Desktop Pets, and the project is a Java application whose primary language is Java with a libGDX and Spine foundation.
The scope is a desktop companion, not a game. The character models it can run fall into three categories: base-building operator characters including their costumes, dynamic operator artwork also including costumes, and enemy combat characters.
The behaviour is the interesting part, because the pets simulate the in-game base-building behaviour rather than playing a fixed loop. The characters support walking, sitting and lying down. They respond to mouse interaction with a poke action. Operators with special base-building actions have a chance of triggering them.
On the enemy side, enemies that have a walk animation will walk, and enemies with an attack animation can be interacted with by the mouse.
The result is a small figure that does something different every few seconds, which is the difference between a desktop pet and a looping GIF pasted onto the desktop. For a user who wants the Arknights base characters on their screen, that is the point of the project, and it is also the part that is hardest for a static image to fake.
The homepage is arkpets.harryh.cn, and the README notes that the project only supports Chinese documentation, with English users invited to contact the developers.
Gravity, window edges and dragging across monitors
The physics is a flat gravity field, and the README lists what that enables.
The desktop pet supports free fall and other physical phenomena. It can be dragged onto an extended display. And it can stand on the edge of an open window.
That last one is the feature that separates this from a conventional desktop pet. The pet is not confined to the bottom of the screen like a taskbar widget; it walks along the top edge of your browser window, falls when that window moves, and can be picked up and dropped elsewhere.
The implementation is built on libGDX, which is a Java game framework, and on Spine, the 2D skeletal animation runtime. Spine is the correct technical choice here and it is also the reason the model content is a separate concern: Spine assets are authored by the community in the Ark-Models repository, and the application just plays them. The animation data, the atlases and the skeleton definitions all come from that separate project.
There is a manual mode, accessible from the tray menu, which lets the user drive the pet with the left and right arrow keys and switch its animation with the up and down arrow keys. That is a sensible addition for a pet that otherwise has its own ideas about what to do.
The rendering options are also in the launcher, where the user can set image scaling, maximum frame rate and window boundaries, and where highlight outlines and drop shadows can be disabled to reduce rendering cost. The highlight outline is described as reproducing the character selection effect from the in-game base system.
A launcher that downloads its own content
The launcher is a graphical interface for browsing models and adjusting settings, and it does more than that: it is the content delivery mechanism for the application.
Models can be searched by name, by pinyin, or by costume brand, and filtered by category. The model library can be downloaded from the internet, with the library maintained by the community. Behaviour settings cover the pet's action interactions, deployment position and physical parameters, and display settings cover scaling, maximum frame rate and window bounds.
The system tray is where the runtime controls live. Right-clicking either the tray icon or the pet itself opens a menu, and the menu can enable manual mode, enable transparent mode, switch the form of a multi-form character, and quit the launcher or a single pet. There is a detail here about tray ownership: while the launcher is running, already-started pets are consolidated into one tray, and if the launcher is not running, each pet creates its own tray icon.
That last behaviour is the kind of thing that matters for anyone scripting the application or embedding it in a workflow. It means the tray state depends on whether the launcher process is alive, which is worth knowing before you build anything on top of it.
Other launcher features include an announcement panel that shows changelogs and pops up automatically when there are unread important announcements, model library download and update checks, and software update checking and installation from the options page. From v3.9 the project also integrates Mirror酱 to provide faster content downloads.
Windows only, with three distribution shapes
The usage section is blunt about the platform: currently only Windows 7 and above graphical operating systems are supported. The project does not run on other operating systems, and the good news is that support for MacOS and Linux is in the development stage.
The quick start is four steps. Go to the releases page and download the latest ArkPets-Setup.exe installer. Run the installer and open the ArkPets launcher after it finishes. On first use you need to download the model files, which is done with the download model button in the model library management panel on the models page. Then search for and select the character you want, and press the start button in the lower left.
There is a fallback for the download step. If the models cannot be downloaded from within the application, you can visit the ArkModels repository page, download a model archive manually, and import it with the import archive button in the model library management panel.
Three distribution shapes are offered beyond the installer. There is a zip archive for portable use without installation. There is a jar version that runs directly if the machine already has a JDK 17 Java runtime, with the caveat that the autostart on boot feature is unavailable in that form. And there is a command line route, documented separately in docs/CmdLine.md, for starting a pet from a terminal.
Updates are handled by running the new installer over the old one, with no need to uninstall the previous version first, whether coming from v2.x or v3.x.
The repository layout reflects a modular application, with core/, desktop/, assets/, docs/ and a Gradle build using build.gradle, settings.gradle, gradle.properties and the gradle wrappers, and an .idea/ directory for IntelliJ.
Transparent mode, taskbar detection and the streaming case
Three small features reveal what the author considers the real friction points of a desktop pet.
Transparent mode is the answer to the problem of the pet covering what you are working on. Opening it in the tray menu disables all interaction between the pet and the mouse, so mouse operations pass through to the window underneath. The README frames it as preventing accidental interaction while gaming or watching video.
The lower boundary distance setting handles a display quirk. On some users' machines the pet cannot correctly detect the taskbar position and sinks into it, so the taskbar height can be set manually on the behaviour page.
The third is for streamers. If you want to capture the pet window with streaming software, you disable the option to run the pet as a background application, in the options page of the launcher.
The autostart feature is configured in the options page, and after it is set the last started pet is generated automatically when the machine boots.
Taken together, these are the accommodations a desktop pet needs to coexist with software rather than fight it. The taskbar detection workaround is a reminder that this is a Java application running on a Windows compositor, and that the display arrangement in front of it is not always what the application assumes.
The README also lists the next-step plans, marked as possibly implemented in the distant future: internationalisation and responsive layout, on-demand resource downloading, operator voice support, a full update of dependency library versions, and remembering configuration such as transparent mode between sessions.
GPL-3.0, a telemetry document, and related projects
The licence is GPL3, and the README states the terms plainly: anyone is free to use and modify the source code, provided the author information and original agreement are kept in the source or copyright notice, and the same licence is used when open-sourcing.
That matters for the model assets as much as for the code, because the Arknights characters and art belong to the publisher, and the Ark-Models repository is where the community-authored Spine conversions live. A desktop pet that ships those models is in a legally murkier position than a desktop pet that ships nothing, and the GPL grant from the application author cannot extend to the game's assets. Anyone planning a commercial use has to think about that, and the README's Credits document for third-party libraries is the starting point rather than an answer.
The documentation set includes a changelog, a FAQ at docs/FAQ.md, and a telemetry explanation at docs/Telemetry.md. The presence of a dedicated telemetry document on a desktop pet application is notable, since the README does not otherwise mention telemetry or analytics. It is the document to read if you care about what the application reports.
The related projects are worth listing because they show where the boundary of this application lies. Ark-Models is the Arknights Spine model library, the data source. Ark-Pets-Integration by litwak913 provides integration libraries for other desktop systems. ArkPets-Web by fuyufjh is an independent implementation for a web renderer. Ark-Unpacker is a utility for unpacking game resources, and SuperSpineViewer by Aloento is a utility for viewing Spine models.
The release history shows v3.13.1 on 2026-09-25, v3.13.0 on 2026-08-29 and v3.12.0 on 2026-07-09, with the default branch named v3.x and the last push on 2026-09-26.
Editorial conclusion
Ark-Pets suits a Windows user who plays Arknights and wants the base-building characters on their desktop, since the physics behaviour, the window interactions and the model search are all implemented and the model content is maintained separately so it can grow without the application changing. It is the wrong tool for anyone on macOS or Linux, because the project states only Windows 7 and above is supported while MacOS and Linux support is still in development, and commercial use has to stay within GPL-3.0, which requires keeping the notices and open-sourcing under the same licence. Before you install, read docs/FAQ.md and docs/Telemetry.md, and expect a first run that requires downloading the model library before anything appears on screen.
Frequently asked questions
Which operating systems does Ark-Pets run on?
Only Windows 7 and above graphical operating systems are currently supported. The README states the program does not run on other operating systems, and that MacOS and Linux support is in development.
How do I install and start an Ark-Pets desktop pet?
Download the latest ArkPets-Setup.exe from the releases page, run the installer and open the launcher, download the model files with the download model button in the model library management panel, then pick a character and press start.
Can I run Ark-Pets without installing it?
Yes. A zip archive is provided for portable use, and a jar version runs directly if the machine has a JDK 17 Java runtime, although the autostart on boot feature is unavailable in the jar form. There is also a command line route documented in docs/CmdLine.md.
Where do the Ark-Pets character models come from?
The launcher downloads a model library from the internet that is maintained by the community, and the models themselves are held in the separate Ark-Models repository. If the in-app download fails, you can download a model archive from that repository and import it with the import archive button.
What licence is Ark-Pets released under?
GPL-3.0. The README explains that the source code can be used and modified freely provided the author information and original agreement are retained and the same licence is used when open sourcing.
Official sources
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