Shimeji Buddy FAQ – Shimeji Chrome Extension Questions Answered

A Shimeji is a small animated desktop mascot that walks around the edge of your screen, climbs windows and reacts when you interact with it. The idea comes from a Japanese desktop-pet program from 2009. Shimeji Buddy brings the same idea to the Chrome browser as a lightweight extension.

Shimeji Buddy is a free Chrome extension with a library of animated Shimeji characters: anime heroes, game icons, chibi mascots, animals, K-Pop idols, cartoons and film characters. You pick the buddies you like and they play on every web page you visit.

Yes. Shimeji Buddy is published on the Chrome Web Store and reviewed by Google. It only needs permission to draw its animation layer on web pages. It does not read passwords, form data or browsing history, and it never sends page content anywhere.

Completely free. There is no premium tier, no subscription and no in-app purchase. The website is supported by a small number of ads.

Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Brave, Opera, Vivaldi, Arc and Chrome OS on Chromebooks. Firefox and Safari are not supported yet.

No. Each buddy is a sprite-sheet animation that uses a few megabytes of memory. You can pause or hide buddies on heavy pages, and they automatically pause on background tabs.

Click the Shimeji Buddy icon in your toolbar and turn the character off, or press Alt+Shift+S to hide every buddy on the current tab.

Custom sprite-sheet import is on our roadmap. For now you can request a character through the contact page and we add the most requested ones every month.

No. Shimeji Buddy characters are fan-made tributes drawn by independent artists. All trademarks belong to their respective owners. See our DMCA page if you are a rights holder.

Chrome for Android and iOS does not support extensions, so Shimeji Buddy is desktop and Chromebook only.