Clippy

Note: Some antimalware applications might trigger warnings for this application. However, our tests have shown that these are actually fake positives, which means that it's safe to download and run Clippy.

Everyone who has ever used the earlier editions of Microsoft Office remember Clippy, the Microsoft experiment that managed to annoy people rather than amuse them. Now discontinued, Microsoft Clippy used to be an intelligent tool for helping people get used to the Office environment by providing an interactive interface.

Unfortunately for Microsoft, Clippy turned out to be more irritating than helpful for users, mostly due to its ability to appear on the screen at the worst of times, usually while you were trying to work on an important project.

If you want to pull a prank on your friends and make them think they suddenly traveled back in time, you can place a fake Clippy on the desktop. The tool we're talking about is wrapped in a lightweight package and doesn't require installation. It's only necessary to unzip the downloaded archive and double-click the .exe.

Clippy runs in the background, so there's no chance of accidentally spotting it while working on the computer. It can only be spotted in the background process list of the Windows Task Manager.

While running in the background, Clippy shows messages at random times, appearing on the lower-right part of the screen (right above the system tray). Taking an ironic approach to the original Clippy, the fake assistant displays useless text on the screen, like "Unable to follow your instructions" or "Sometimes I just popup for no particular reason, like now".

To double the damage and guarantee you get distracted from work, fake Clippy produces popup "swoosh" sound every time it appears. It also dares to ask if you want it to go away, displaying two buttons for yes and no. Clicking "Yes" doesn't do anything, of course.

If you do manage to access the options panel, though (click on Clippy several times), you can change the text displayed and check out command lines, besides quitting. Even if this software project is old, it worked smoothly on Windows 10 in our tests.