Tinsel

Christmas for your Mac.

This page is decorated the way Tinsel decorates your desktop. The lights around the edge, the snow gathering on these windows, the tree by the Dock: that is the app.

Shake a window and its snow flies off; drag it gently and the snow rides along. Click the tree in the menu bar to change things.

Buy Tinsel for Mac · $4.99 DownloadmacOS 15 or later · Apple silicon

Tree

A tree beside your Dock.

Four styles, five sets of ornaments, and a star, angel or bow on top. Drag it anywhere, resize it, and click straight through it.

Lights

One string, all the way round.

A single cable hangs from hook to hook around your screen and climbs over the Dock, as it does around this page. Turn on Dance to music and the bulbs pulse with whatever is playing. Or choose Small mode for one short string around the notch.

Small mode

Or just a little string around the notch.

Prefer something quieter? Small mode hangs one short string of half-size bulbs around your MacBook's notch, out of the way of everything you do. On a Mac without a notch it hangs over Tinsel's icon in the menu bar. One switch in the menu bar turns it on.

Snow

Snow that knows where your windows are.

It falls behind your work and melts around your pointer. Let it settle on your windows and it piles up along their top edges, then slides off when you shake one. It can follow the real weather, too, and only snow when it is snowing outside.

Sounds

And the part a web page can't show you.

A fire crackling, winter wind, sleigh bells and a music box playing whole carols, mixed however you like and made live on your Mac. There is a sleep timer, a soft chime on the hour, and it steps back when other audio starts.

Tinsel's Sounds settings: a mix of fireplace, winter wind, sleigh bells and music box, each with its own level

Details

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sleeps until Christmas

Needs: macOS 15 Sequoia or later, on a Mac with Apple silicon.
Season: December 1 to January 6 unless you say otherwise. It hides in full-screen apps and stays out of screen sharing.
Light: About 1% of your CPU at 30 fps and nothing at all when matching your display, with the snow drawn by the GPU. It rests whenever your screen does.
Privacy: No accounts, no analytics. It asks for a permission only when you switch on the feature that needs it.
License: $4.99, once, for every Mac you own. Updates arrive inside the app. Already bought? Download Tinsel and activate it with your key or the email you paid with.

Buy Tinsel for Mac · $4.99