BabyBoard turns your MacBook into a safe, colorful sensory playground. 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.
Two modes
Pick a mode the first time. BabyBoard remembers it for next time. Switch any time by holding M for 5 seconds.
Pure cause-and-effect. Every press, click, drag, and bubble-pop paints something colorful. Number keys spawn that many shapes.
Same colors, same physics, same cursor — but letter and number keys spawn the matching glyph. Other keys still spawn shapes.
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.
Sensory Play 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.
It's free during beta.
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.
