Nyan Cat, also known as Pop Tart Cat, is an internet meme that depicts an 8-bit animation of a cat with the body of a cherry Pop-Tart, flying through outer space and leaving a rainbow behind it. In video form, the animation is often set to a remix of the song "Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya!-. As with any absurd internet memes, Nyan Cat is insanely popular, so much that last week YouTube enabled a custom flash player for the original Nyan Cat video that showed an animated mini Nyan Cat flying across the progress bar with a rainbow trail.Now, from the creators of Instant Elevator Music, a program that adds elevator music to Windows progress bar, comes another program - the Nyan Cat Progress Bar. Yes, you-ve guessed it - this free application displays the Nyan Cat over progress bars in Windows. Simply download the Nyan Cat Progress Bar, extract the contents of the zip file to a folder and double-click on the executable file.
The applications sits on the system tray and waits for the Windows progress bar to show up, when you copy files, install programs etc. When it finds one, it promptly replaces the progress bar with an incredibly annoying Nyan Cat with the speakers blazing Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya!

The developer of Nyan Cat Progress Bar says that the program depends on the progress bar being a standard Windows progress bar and so won't work with every progress bar on your system, but he has confirmed that it works with Windows Explorer for file copies.

You can choose to silence the Nyan Cat from automatically activating, or if you don't want a particular program to activate the Nyan Cat, you can right-click the Nyan Cat Progress Bar icon and choose "Ignore (application name)". You can also add programs to the ignore list in the Settings dialog. There is an option to prevent Nyan Cat from activating while you're listening to music in either iTunes or Winamp.

How to use it

Fairly-Important Note: Nyan Cat Progress Bar doesn't work properly on Windows XP (see below for more information). If you're still running XP, you might want to consider upgrading to Windows 7.

What apps does it work with?

Since the Nyan Cat Progress Bar depends on the progress bar being a standard Windows progress bar (ie. not a custom-drawn one, or a non-native one), it won't work with every progress bar on your system, but I've at least confirmed it works with Windows Explorer for file copies. If you want to hear music while you wait for more apps, try Instant Elevator Music instead: it has support for a lot more apps since it doesn't depend on being able to get the progress from the progress bar you're looking at.

Some apps I've seen it work with are: WinZip, 7-Zip, Audacity, and Windows DVD Maker, Internet Download Manager, Even Bittorrent & uTorrent but it should work with some other apps too.

How can I turn it off?

There are a few ways you can silence the Nyan Cat:

Right-click the Nyan Cat Progress Bar icon in your system tray (near the clock) and choose Silence! to stop the Nyan Cat from automatically activating.
If you don't want a particular program to activate the Nyan Cat, you can right-click the Nyan Cat Progress Bar icon and choose "Ignore (application name)". You can also add programs to the ignore list in the Settings dialog.
If you don't want Nyan Cat to activate while you're listening to music in either iTunes or Winamp, you can right-click the Nyan Cat Progress Bar icon, choose Settings, and then tick the "Don't show Nyan Cat if I'm listening to music in iTunes or Winamp" checkbox.