Answers to the things a person might want to know before installing a small light on their Mac screen.
What does Petit Fire do?
Petit Fire is a Mac menu bar app that puts one warm light at the edge of your screen. Along the edge, it draws the warm light of a small flame, and that light sways softly while you work. You click the menu bar icon to light it and click it again to put it out.
The light is drawn with Metal. Its sway comes from footage of a real flame that ships inside Petit Fire: the average brightness of that recording sets how strong the light is from moment to moment. Its five settings are reached by right-clicking the same icon.
Is it free, and what does that include?
Yes. It is free on the Mac App Store, and every setting is there from the first launch, without ads, a trial period, or a subscription.
There are two optional thank-you items you can buy inside the app, if you want to support the work. Buying one changes nothing about how the light behaves. The App Store shows the amounts.
Which Macs can run it?
Any Mac on macOS 14 or later, with Apple silicon or an Intel processor. It lives in the menu bar and has no Dock icon, so after you open it the first time, look for its icon near the clock rather than in the Dock.
It is a Mac app only. There is no version for iPhone, iPad, or Windows.
Does it connect to the internet?
For one purpose. It asks Apple, through StoreKit, what the optional thank-you items cost, and it completes a purchase if you choose to make one. That is the only network traffic it has. It does not contact any server run by nowthy.
There is no account and no sign-in. Your settings are stored on your Mac. The app keeps no history of when it was lit or for how long. The only state it saves is whether the light is currently on. The privacy page covers the same ground in more detail.
Where are the settings?
Right-click the menu bar icon. There is no separate settings window; the controls are in that menu:
- Brightness, how strong the light is.
- Size, how large the lit area is.
- Place, which corner of the screen the light sits in.
- Volume, how loud the sound is.
- Sound, whether the sound plays at all.
- Open at login, whether the app is available when you log in.
Open at login makes the app ready in the menu bar. Lighting it is still your click.
What is the sound?
A recording of a wooden-wick candle as it burns. You can switch it on or off and set the volume from the same menu.
The recording is about a minute long, and it is not played as a loop. Each time, the app takes a different stretch of it and joins the pieces with a crossfade, so the sound does not come around at the same interval.
How long does it stay lit?
Until you click the icon again. Once lit, it holds the same brightness you chose and keeps swaying at the edge of the screen, whether you have been working for ten minutes or all afternoon.
The menu shows no elapsed time, and nothing on screen counts sessions. If you want the light to end at a certain hour, that is your click to make.
Is it meant to help with focus?
It is listed under Lifestyle on the Mac App Store, not Productivity or Utilities, and its description makes no claim about concentration. It is a light that sits beside the work, in the way a small lamp on a desk sits beside whatever you are doing there.
If you want to hold back notifications while you work, that is what Focus modes and Do Not Disturb in macOS are for. They and the light are separate things and can both be on at once.
Does it need special permissions?
It does not ask for Accessibility or Input Monitoring. It draws its light over the screen without reading what is on it, and without listening to the keyboard.
For people using a screen reader, every row in the menu has a name, and each on/off switch reports its state as a value. The light itself is decorative. It carries no information of its own, and everything in the app works the same whether you can see it or not.
Will I be able to see it on a bright screen?
It is easiest to see on a dark desktop. On a bright wallpaper in daylight it is still there, but faint, because a warm glow at the edge has little to stand out against. Dark Mode, a dark wallpaper, or a higher Brightness setting in the menu all make it easier to see. Moving it with Place to a corner where your windows do not usually sit helps as well.
Where do I send a question that is not here?
Write to support@nowthy.com. That address is for both nowthy apps, so mention that your question is about Petit Fire.