Fun: Get a Bouncy Ball to Play With on Your Mac Screen

Ball is a super fun project for Mac that is goofy, simple, and wildly creative. It’s, well, a virtual bouncy ball.

Ball lives in your Mac Dock, and when you click on the Dock icon, the bouncy ball pops out and drops onto your screen. The big red bouncy ball has decent physics too, so you can drag it high and drop it, and it’ll bounce down and around, or you can throw it against the side of your screen and watch it ricochet around. Just play around with it, that’s what it’s for.

Ball may be completely pointless from a productivity standpoint, but it’s also unreasonably entertaining and fun to play with. Whether you’re bored at work, school, or home, now you can digitally fidget with a virtual bouncy ball on your Mac screen.

• Get Ball from the Github project page here

(If you’re unfamiliar and need help figuring out how to download from Github you certainly aren’t alone, click on “Releases” to find the precompiled downloads)

Click on the Ball Dock icon and the ball will appear on screen.

Click on the Ball Dock icon again and the ball will disappear.

Check out the animated GIF and embedded video below if you just want to see it in action without playing around with Ball yourself. But really, if you have a Mac, and like to goof off a bit, it’s a small download, and fun to play around with.

Cheers to developer @nateparrott on X/Twitter for this fun little Mac virtual toy! Don’t forget to follow @osxdaily on X / Twitter too while you’re at it.

this week i'm FINALLY going to share + open-source three little random projects I've been working on!

here's the first one: BALL

it's just a little ball that lives in your dock. take it out, throw it around, put it back. comes in one color: red. bouncy. pic.twitter.com/PKx6TjAC1s

— nate parrott (@nateparrott) June 24, 2024

It’s not quite a game, though it kind of is, but it is certainly one of the most creative, fun, and unique Mac apps I’ve seen in quite some time, reminding me of some of the shareware greats from way back in the Classic Mac days like googly eyes that followed your cursor.

If you enjoyed this little bouncy ball, you might appreciate some of the other fun stuff we have covered, too.