A desktop clock for your Mac
Yes — Horologe is a desktop clock for the Mac, and it's $5.99, paid once. It's a small window that sits in front of your wallpaper and behind your windows, and it strikes the hour.
The specification, in prose, so you can weigh it against anything else: four faces — Mantel, Station, Chronometer, Nocturne; five bells — Westminster, Whittington, Ship's Bell, Temple Bowl, Grandfather; the quarters on or off, and the hour counted out either way; quiet hours silent from 10pm to 8am; a right-click on the bell in the menu bar to mute. It's about three and a half megabytes, needs macOS 15 or later, and comes from the Mac App Store.
What to look for
Clocks for the Mac come in a few shapes: a menu-bar readout, a screen saver, or a window on the desktop. Each is fine at what it does. What separates them is where the clock sits, whether you can size it, and whether it makes a sound.
The face. A clock you look at all day should be drawn well and stay sharp. Horologe's four faces are drawn in code rather than stored as images, so a dial is as crisp at ninety pixels between your desktop icons as it is at five hundred on an external display. Pick one and it wears that face on your desk afterwards.
Where it sits. A clock that comes to the front fights your work. Horologe stays at desktop level — in front of the wallpaper, behind every window — so it never takes focus and never covers what you're reading. Drag it where you want it; pull a corner to make it larger.
Whether it speaks, and how to stop it. A clock with sound should arrive with the off switch already built. Here that's a right-click on the menu-bar bell, and quiet hours from ten at night to eight in the morning. The quarters are optional; the hour is counted either way.
The price. One payment, or a subscription? Horologe is $5.99, paid once. There's no account and no server, so there's nothing to renew and nothing that expires.
On one card
- Faces: four, drawn in code, resolution-independent.
- Bells: five, computed from each bell's own partials.
- Quarters: on, or off. The hour counted out either way.
- Quiet hours: silent from 10pm until 8am, adjustable.
- Mute: right-click the bell in the menu bar.
- Weight: about three and a half megabytes. macOS 15 or later.
- Where: the Mac App Store. Price: $5.99, once.
What it doesn't do
No alarms, no timers, no world clocks, and no ticking. It can ring during a call — it can't see your screen or hear your microphone, and it won't ask to. That's the trade: a clock that's deaf to your meeting, and one right-click from silent.
If you want the hour to arrive on its own, Horologe is $5.99 once. For how it sits on the desk, read the menu bar clock and the clock behind it; for why it isn't a widget, read that comparison.
Read next: How to make your Mac chime every hour