BabyBoard turns your MacBook into a safe, colorful playground for your baby — and grows into a quiet learning app as they do. Every keypress paints something delightful, and nothing else can happen.
Designed for tiny hands
Mash the keys. Wave the mouse. Drag the trackpad. BabyBoard turns every input into a little burst of color. The system is locked down so apps, files, and settings stay safe.
Mouse movement paints flowing pastel ribbons that taper and fade — physics-smoothed so they always feel right.
Translucent bubbles drift across the screen and burst into a particle fountain when the cursor touches them.
A glowing pastel star replaces the system arrow — easy to track and visually rewarding.
Click or press a key and shapes fall under soft gravity, bounce off edges, and settle at the bottom before fading.
Click-and-drag to draw elastic curved ribbons — a gentle introduction to the drag gesture as distinct from tapping.
Keyboard, scroll, force-quit, app switching, and the menu bar are all locked. Focus is reclaimed automatically.
Experiences that grow with your child
Two experiences live today; more land as your child gets older. Pick one to play, and switch any time by holding M for 5 seconds.
Pure cause-and-effect. Every press, click, drag, and bubble-pop paints something colorful — one shape per keypress, no exceptions.
Same colors, same physics, same cursor — but letter and number keys spawn the matching glyph. Other keys still spawn shapes.
Sound design
Every shape, letter, and bubble plays a soft tone — and every pitch sits on a calm pentatonic scale, so however much your baby presses, two sounds are never dissonant. No "yays," no animal noises, no ringtones. Just an organic palette of warm sines that fades quickly and never startles.
A subtle ambient bed plays underneath — low drones and a hint of air, different per experience. Hold S for 2.5 s while playing to mute everything; toggle each category from the menu.
Built to grow The sound system is designed for new palettes, so the soundscape can evolve alongside your child.
Adult escape hatches
Babies can't accidentally close it. Adults can — but only deliberately. Four ways out, no surprises.
Three taps to playtime
Drop BabyBoard into Applications and launch it like any other Mac app.
Shapes or Letters & Numbers. Your choice is remembered for next time.
The screen fills with color. The keyboard is harmless. You exhale.
Free during beta. Built and tested on macOS 14+.
macOS 14.0 Sonoma or later · Apple Silicon & Intel
It's a kiosk app: it consumes every keypress, blocks force-quit and process switching, and reclaims focus if it's ever lost. Adults can still exit (hold Esc, click 5× in the corner, or hold M). As with any device, supervise your child.
No. BabyBoard never writes anywhere except a small UserDefaults entry for your mode preference. Keyboard events never reach other apps.
There's a 30-day free trial, then either Crawl ($14.99 once, just Shapes) or Walk ($29.99/yr, every experience plus future ones). See the pricing page for details.
No. Every event plays a soft pentatonic tone — even rapid presses stay consonant. There's a quiet ambient bed underneath, and you can mute the lot anytime by holding S for 2.5 s, or toggle play sounds and ambient sounds independently from the menu. No "yays," no animal noises.
The kiosk features (disabling force-quit and process switching) require entitlements that conflict with App Store sandboxing. BabyBoard is distributed directly with Developer ID notarization.
