A 3D fruit fly on macOS desktop powered by the real FlyWire connectome

DesktopFly is a macOS application that renders a 3D fruit fly on your desktop powered by a real neural simulation of the FlyWire connectome, featuring 668 neurons with ~19,000 real synaptic connections running at 1 kHz. The fly behaves realistically—walking, grooming, sleeping, and fleeing your cursor—using the same neurons and escape circuitry as actual fruit flies, with behaviors like escape triggered only when Giant Fiber neurons spike through their real synaptic connections. The application is open-source, permission-free, and includes an interactive brain window showing live neural activity that users can stimulate to trigger specific behaviors like grooming or turning.