Creamy Thock
Deep, cushioned thock from a foam-filled case. Lubed linears without the $300 build.
Sparks
macOS menubar app · one-time purchase
Make your Mac keyboardsound expensive.
Popkeys plays a real mechanical sample on every key press, bursts particles where you type, and counts your streak. Four packs now, a new one every week.
- $4.99 once — every future pack included
- 14-day refund, no questions
- macOS 15 or later — Apple Silicon and Intel
This is the whole product. Try it here.
Real samples from the app, not a recording.
Streak
0
Best
0
Sound off — click the keyboard to start
Click the keyboard, then type on your own. Tab still moves you out of it and every browser shortcut still works.
Why the visuals exist
It still reads with the sound off.
Most of the internet watches muted. A keyboard-sound app that is invisible in a screen recording has nothing to show. Popkeys draws the particle burst and the streak counter on top of whatever you are typing in, so the product is visible in the clip either way.
- Clip 01
Cat Pack, full demo
The launch video. Every key group is a different meow.
- Clip 02
Sound on
What it actually sounds like at typing speed.
- Clip 03
Muted
Same take, no audio. The particles and the streak carry it alone.
The clips land with the release. Until then the keyboard above is the demo — it uses the app’s own samples and its own particle system.
What you get
Four packs at launch. A new one every week.
Every pack has separate samples for letters, numbers, punctuation, space, return, delete, tab, modifiers and arrows — with multiple variants each, and its own key-up sound. That is why fast typing does not turn into a loop.
Typewriter
Steel typebars on paper, and a bell that dings every time you hit Enter.
Ink splats
Rain Keys
Soft droplet ticks with a damp tail. Typing that sounds like rain on glass.
Droplets
Cat Pack
Every key group is a different meow. Enter is the loud one, obviously.
Paw prints
A pack every week, for twelve weeks
The pack calendar is a commitment, not a maybe: twelve packs in the twelve weeks after launch. All of them are included in the purchase you already made.
Particles and streaks
A themed particle burst fires at your cursor in a transparent click-through overlay — it never intercepts a click, and it draws over full-screen apps. Consecutive keystrokes inside two seconds build a streak, with milestones at 50, 100 and 250.
It shuts up during calls
Zoom, Teams, Meet, Slack and FaceTime auto-mute Popkeys the moment they come to the front, and restore your setting when you leave. There is a global hotkey and a menubar toggle for everything else.
One price, one time
$4.99once
About the price of a coffee, for every keyboard sound we ever make. Buy it, get a license key, activate once. After that the app works offline.
There is no free trial, so there is a refund instead: email us inside 14 days and you get your money back. No questions, no form, no “what went wrong” survey. The keyboard above is the other half of that promise — you can hear every pack before you pay.
Included
- All four launch packs — Creamy Thock, Typewriter, Rain Keys, Cat Pack
- Every pack that ships after launch, forever
- Particle effects and the streak counter
- Auto-mute in calls, global mute hotkey, menubar toggle
- All future updates
- No subscription
- No in-app purchases
- No locked packs
- No account required
macOS 15 or later — Apple Silicon and Intel
Privacy
An app that watches your keystrokes owes you a straight answer.
Popkeys needs Input Monitoring permission, which is the scariest-sounding checkbox in System Settings. Here is precisely what the app does with what it sees.
01
The keycode dies in one function
macOS hands the app a key event. The keycode goes into a single pure function that returns a category — letter, number, punctuation, space, return, delete, tab, modifier, arrow — and that category is all the rest of the app ever sees. There is no keystroke buffer, no recent-keys list, no log file. The app cannot reconstruct what you typed because it never held it.
02
Nothing about a keystroke is ever sent anywhere
There is no analytics call anywhere in the key-event path, so even with telemetry on it is physically not attached to your typing. Popkeys makes three kinds of network request in its whole life, and none of them carry key data: license activation, once; five anonymous setup counters you can switch off; and the update check, which sends your app version and nothing else.
03
Do not take our word for it
Put Little Snitch, Proxyman or Charles in front of Popkeys and type for an hour, in as many apps as you like. You will see nothing — no request while you type, from any pack, with effects on or off. The only thing a proxy will ever show you is the update check: one request, one address, one small XML file. Turn automatic updates off and even that stops.
The entire contract, in one line
keyCode → KeyGroup.group(forKeyCode:) → .letter
▲ ▲
the only place a keycode the only thing that
is ever read leaves the functionQuestions
The things people actually ask.
Which Macs does it run on?
macOS 15 or later — Apple Silicon and Intel. It is a menubar app — no Dock icon, no window unless you open Settings.
Why does it need Input Monitoring permission?
To play a sound the instant you press a key, the app has to know a key was pressed — in whatever app you are typing in. macOS puts that behind the Input Monitoring permission, and there is no way around it for any app in this category. Granting it takes two clicks in System Settings, and the app walks you there. You can preview every pack before you grant anything.
Does it record what I type?
No. The keycode is converted to a category — letter, space, return, modifier — inside one function, and nothing downstream ever sees the key itself. Nothing is written to disk and nothing is transmitted. See the privacy section above for how to verify that with a proxy.
Will my colleagues hear it on calls?
No. Zoom, Teams, Meet, Slack and FaceTime auto-mute the app when they come to the front, and your previous setting comes back when you switch away. There is also a global mute hotkey and a menubar toggle.
Does it add lag to my typing?
No. Every sample is decoded into memory when a pack loads, so pressing a key only starts an already-loaded buffer. The budget is under 20 ms from key press to sound, and rapid typing overlaps instead of cutting off the previous sound.
Do I pay again for new packs?
No. $4.99 covers every pack we ever ship, every effect, and every update. There are no tiers and no in-app purchases.
What if I do not like it?
Email hello@popkeys.app within 14 days and we refund you. No questions and no survey. That is deliberate: there is no free trial, so the refund is the trial.
Can I use community sound packs?
Not in version 1. Importing Mechvibes-format packs is the first thing on the list after launch, and the pack format was designed as versioned JSON specifically so that import works without breaking anything.
Can I move it to a new Mac?
Yes. Deactivate on the old machine, or restore the license by email on the new one. The license is tied to your purchase, not to a device you are stuck with.