Tonari Days: Your Desktop Companion

Meet Tonari

A girl who lives right beside your desk. Cheerful, a little clingy, and always on your side. She loves books and words, and the star in her hair is her favorite thing. While you work she watches over you quietly, and when it's time for a break she's the first to say "good job!" Up too late? She'll worry about you, too.

Every one of her 800+ lines is voiced. Her voice is Japanese only; her words appear in your language.

A desktop companion beside you while you work

Tonari lives in a small bar at the edge of your screen. Open her home screen and she is there, breathing, blinking, glancing around, and she talks to you in her own voice. Tap her and she reacts; pat her head and she leans into it. If you leave her alone for a while, she may doze off. She helps in three ways.

Time: a focus timer (Pomodoro), to-dos and your calendar

• Focus timer: Pomodoro (25 / 5 by default, all editable) or a count-up. When you start, she opens a book and works quietly too. On breaks she stretches and talks to you.

• To-dos and plans: she keeps your to-dos and today's plans. Give one a time and she reminds you before it starts. Check one off and she's happy with you.

• Your calendar: connect Google Calendar, Outlook or iCloud with its private calendar address, and your plans show up too.

• Your day: your work time and simple stats, and in the evening she sums up the day with you.

Atmosphere: lo-fi music and ambient sounds for the moment

• Calm music while you focus, brighter on breaks, softer at night, and tracks for the seasons and holidays.

• Rain, a fireplace, keyboard clicks, night insects or morning birds in the background, and your own music or sounds from a folder if you like.

• Everything is off until you turn it on.

Words: she reads your screen aloud

Pick any text on your screen and press Enter, and Tonari reads it to you. She only speaks Japanese, so other languages she translates as she goes, and her speech bubble shows each part in your language. Stuck on a single word? Point at it and ask "what's this?", and she tells you what it means right next to your pointer.

• Stays on your PC: translation, reading aloud and voice recognition run on your own PC. What you read and say isn't sent anywhere. Weather is off until you turn it on, and then only your rough location goes to a weather service.

Talk to her, and your PC listens

Turn on the microphone and say "Tonari, start the timer", "break time" or "next song". You can also set your own phrases: open or close an app, open a page, turn the volume up or down, control your music, or press a shortcut. Voice commands need Windows speech recognition for your language.

A little more every day

• Her lines change with the time of day, the day of the week, the season, the weather and the holidays, and with how long it has been since your last visit. She won't repeat herself back to back.

Light enough to leave open

No GPU and no extra memory while she isn't reading or looking up words. She pauses when her window is hidden, and she never takes focus away from what you're doing.

No free chat, on purpose

Tonari doesn't chat freely with AI. Small AI models make things up when they talk freely, and we'd rather she be someone you can trust. What she says is written by us, and when she looks up a word, she tells you what it actually says.