Gnat

A little macOS application that displays a gnat running across your screen at random intervals.

Features

• Runs silently in the background (no dock icon or menu bar clutter)
• Gnat appears at random intervals (~30 seconds)
• Starts from random screen edges and runs across
• Lightweight and unobtrusive

Installation

Using Homebrew (Recommended)

# Add the tap (replace with your actual repo)
brew tap yourusername/gnat

# Install
brew install gnat

# Run as a service (starts automatically)
brew services start gnat

Manual Installation

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/yourusername/gnat.git
cd gnat

# Build and install
make install

# Run in background
gnat &

Usage

Once installed and running, the application runs in the background. You'll see a small gnat occasionally run across your screen edges.

To stop the service:

brew services stop gnat

Or if running manually, find and kill the process:

pkill gnat

Building from Source

Requires:

• macOS 12.0 or later
• Swift 5.9 or later
• Xcode Command Line Tools

swift build -c release

Uninstallation

# If installed via Homebrew
brew services stop gnat
brew uninstall gnat

# If installed manually
make uninstall

License

MIT License - See LICENSE file for details