Questions, answered straight

Tankbar is a tiny living aquarium for your Windows taskbar. Feed the fish, pet them, breed new ones and decorate the tank while you work. It is calm, offline-first and made to be looked at all day.

The full game is planned for 12 November 2026 on Steam, for Windows 10 and 11. Dates can shift, and the price will be announced closer to launch. A free Steam demo is planned before launch. The free web demo is playable right now in your browser, and the roadmap shows what is next.

Never. Fish don’t die, starve, get sick or run away. Feeding and petting just make them happier, and happy fish make more pearls.

It is designed so you can’t. Breeding never uses up the parents. Letting a fish go always asks you to confirm. And you can favorite any fish to lock it: a locked fish can’t be released or gifted until you unlock it. Fish with a crest or a named layout are locked for you automatically.

No. Your fish keep earning while you’re away: full rate for 8 hours, then a reduced rate for up to 24 hours. A “Welcome back” card tells you what they made.

47 species across 10 biomes, with 36 patterns and 8 rare traits. That makes 1,692 species-and-pattern combinations to collect in your Dex, and 324,864 different combinations of species, pattern and traits before color and size are counted. Continuous color genes mean two fish rarely look the same.

Every pattern also has 1,000 numbered layouts, and 37 of them were designed by hand and given names, such as Tancho, a single red crown on a white koi.

Better eggs (Fancy and Mystic) have better odds, and breeding can pass on traits or produce mutations. Fish that have become close friends mutate a little more often. Eggs show their exact odds, and every pairing shows every possible pattern, the trait chances and the rarity range before you commit. The Fish and odds page lays it all out.

Offline, the fish inside an egg is decided once, when you buy it, and is stored in your save, so reloading can’t reroll it. What you see is what you get.

While you are signed in to the Harbor, eggs are sealed automatically: the Harbor’s Mint rolls them from the same odds tables and publishes a commitment in advance, so anyone can check the roll was fair. More on that under Online and the Harbor.

Every fish has a float, a number from 0 to 1 shown to six decimals. Lower is finer. It sets the fish’s finish (Flawless, Gleaming, Bright, Soft or Rustic) and its luster. A Flawless fish has glassy, gleaming skin, while a Rustic one is velvety and matte, and every finish still looks lovely. The float comes from the fish’s genes, so it never changes.

Your tank holds 8 fish at first and can be upgraded to 30. The Reserve Pond has no cap, and pond fish still earn a little.

A built-in focus timer of 15, 25, 45 or 60 minutes. While it runs, your fish earn double pearls. Finish it for stardust and a chance at a Focus Egg. Stopping early is fine: there is no penalty, just no reward.

Yes, it follows your computer’s clock. You can also lock it to day or night, and pick the weather yourself, in Settings.

The game is in English at launch. Simplified Chinese, Japanese and Korean are planned for the 1.1 update in January 2027; dates may shift. This website is available in several languages already.

The price has not been announced yet. It is a one-time purchase, and an optional cosmetic Supporter Pack is planned for launch day if you would like to say thanks. Everything in the game is in the game; the pack is a thank-you and gives no gameplay advantage. Every update on the roadmap, including the Level Road rewards, is free for everyone who owns Tankbar. The web demo is free today.

No, no, no and no. There is no energy system and nothing to “skip” with money, either. The two in-game currencies, pearls and stardust, are earned by playing. The only optional extra is the cosmetic Supporter Pack, planned for launch day. Everything in the game is in the game; the pack is a thank-you.

No. Pearls are earned by playing and can’t be bought, and fish can’t be bought either. Tankbar fish are for keeping and giving, not selling.

Odds are shown before you buy an egg and before you confirm a pairing. Eggs aren’t secretly rerolled. Breeding never uses up parents. Letting a fish go always asks you to confirm. And sealed fish can be verified step by step in the game.

Yes. The free demo runs right in your browser, with no install, no account and no time limit. It includes 3 biomes (Sunlit Shallows, Coral Garden and Kelp Forest) and 18 species, plus feeding, petting, eggs, the Nursery, decorating, Focus Tide, weather, day and night, and all three radio stations.

The full game has 7 more biomes, 29 more species, the Level Road and the optional Harbor. In the demo, progress stops at level 6 and a card mentions the full game. You can keep playing: nothing is lost or locked, and the demo never expires.

That is the plan for the Steam demo. A free Steam demo is planned before launch, and it is designed to carry your tank into the full game through Steam Cloud. The web demo on this site is separate: you can export and import its save as a file, but that file is a backup, not a carry-over path.

In your browser’s local storage, on this website. Nothing is sent anywhere. Clearing your site data, or using a private window, will lose it, so export your save now and then (Settings, Save data, Export save). Import brings it back in this demo. The save is tied to this website’s address, so if the address ever changes, export first.

No, a web page can’t do that. The demo has a Desktop preview mode that shows a simulated taskbar so you can see how it looks. Docking, click-through, the tray icon and hotkeys are features of the Windows app.

It is made for a computer with a mouse and a wide, short taskbar-style tank. We haven’t designed or tested it for touch screens.

It is designed to stay out of the way. It runs at 30 frames per second by default, with 15 and 60 as options. There is a low-detail mode that it can switch to on its own when things run slow. And it pauses when the window is hidden, your PC is locked, or it goes to sleep.

We don’t quote performance figures until we have measured them on real hardware, so we won’t give you a number here.

Wherever you like: on your taskbar (over its empty space), above the taskbar, along the top edge, or floating anywhere. Width, height, position, opacity and which screen it lives on are all adjustable. With an auto-hiding or vertical taskbar, the Above taskbar, Top or Floating modes are your best bet.

You choose how clicks work in Settings: the tank catches clicks, only the fish and buttons do, or Ghost mode, where every click passes straight through. Ctrl+Alt+G toggles Ghost mode.

Ctrl+Alt+T shows or hides the tank. Ctrl+Alt+G toggles Ghost mode. Ctrl+Alt+M opens the menu.

Yes, in Settings under Desktop, and it has a tray icon too.

The full game is for Windows 10 and 11 (64-bit). The free browser demo runs in any modern desktop browser, including on Mac and Linux. We haven’t tested Steam Deck, so we can’t promise it.

UI scale goes from 75 to 200 percent, and panels always stay inside your screen. Reduce motion calms swaying and bobbing. Rarity gems use different shapes as well as colors (and the rarity is written out), so you never have to tell colors apart. We haven’t completed a full keyboard or screen-reader review, so we don’t claim one.

Please do, monetized or not. Turn on Ghost mode and add the Tankbar window as a Window Capture source in OBS (capture setups vary, so do a quick test first). The in-game music is composed live by the game and is fine to use in your Tankbar videos. A streamer mode, where chat names your fish, is planned for launch or soon after. Details are on the press page.

No. Everything except the Harbor works fully offline, and the Harbor can never block your tank. The Harbor is optional and signs in with the Steam account that owns Tankbar.

The Harbor is the optional online mode, planned to arrive with 1.0. You sign in with the Steam account that owns Tankbar. With friends you can send friend requests (and block or report), send gifts (a fish or a daily pearl pouch, with a preset phrase if you like) that arrive as a box on the sand, visit tanks and enter Fish Shows judged half by genes and half by player votes. Everyone can help fill the weekly community Tide with their focus minutes and climb the Finest boards.

There is no player market, and no public chat at 1.0. Nothing to sell, nothing to farm: just gifts between friends. The game is 13+ for online social features.

Tankbar fish are for keeping and giving, not selling. There is no player market. You can give fish to friends as gifts, and you can let a fish go to the reef for pearls.

The game is 13+ for online social features.

While you are online, the Harbor’s Mint rolls every egg you buy, and every baby of two sealed parents, and seals them automatically. Those fish carry a small red seal and a Seal No. The Mint publishes a lock on each day’s secret before the day starts and reveals it once the day is over, so any live sealed fish can be rolled again and checked. To be straight about it, the lock proves the secret was not changed, not that nobody could read it during the day. Press Verify on a sealed fish’s card to see every step.

Sealed fish are given, not sold. They travel to friends as gifts, and their seal goes with them. There is currently a 14-day hold after you join or buy. Copies shared through Steam Family Sharing, and temporary licenses, can use the Harbor, but their fish are not sealed. Crests are designed to turn up about once in 100,000 fish, and crest and named-layout fish are locked automatically.

Fish made offline are unsealed. They’re just as lovely, and the game never waits for the Mint: if the Harbor is out of reach, your egg is simply rolled on your computer.

There is no public chat at 1.0. Player groups called Shoals, with their own chat (free text for players 18 and over, preset phrases for ages 13 to 17), are planned for the 1.1 update in January 2027. Flare Duels, a league, mini-games and public chat channels come later. Everything is planned, and dates may shift: see the roadmap.

On your computer. In the Windows app it is a save file on your PC. In the browser demo it is your browser’s local storage. Tankbar saves every 15 seconds, when the tank is hidden, before quitting and when your PC suspends. You can export or import your save as a file in Settings, under Save data. With Steam Cloud on, your save syncs through Steam (planned for the full game).

The Windows app also keeps automatic rolling backups: 24 hourly and 14 daily. The browser demo keeps 4 backups, at most one an hour.

No. There is no telemetry in the game. Only the Harbor talks to a server, and only after you sign in to it. This website has no analytics and sets no cookies either.

Only what it needs: your Steam ID (only to confirm you own Tankbar), a keeper number, the display name you choose, your friends list, a snapshot of your tank for visits and shows, show entries and votes, gifts, and your focus minutes for the weekly community Tide. You can delete your Harbor data yourself in Settings. The full details are in the privacy policy, which is still being completed.

Yes, and we want to be clear about how. The game’s code was written with the help of an AI coding assistant (Anthropic’s Claude), directed, tested and reviewed by the developer. Some in-game text, like the list of suggested fish names, loading tips and item descriptions, was drafted with the same assistant and then edited by the developer.

No image, video, voice or music generation models were used. Every fish, decoration and environment is drawn by the game’s own code as you play, and the music and sound effects are synthesized live on your computer.

The Chinese, Japanese and Korean game text planned for 1.1 is translated with AI assistance, using a style guide, a glossary and a review pass.

No. The game does not use any AI model while you play.

The translated versions of this website were made with AI assistance and checked against a glossary. The English pages are the source. The legal documents are provided in English only.