Four faces: Mantel, Station, Chronometer, Nocturne
Horologe has four faces — Mantel, Station, Chronometer and Nocturne — and they're four answers to the same question: what should a clock on a desk look like? The clock is $5.99, paid once. The face you pick is the one it wears afterwards.
Everything else is shared: five bells, the quarters on or off, the hour counted out either way, quiet hours from 10pm to 8am, a right-click on the menu-bar bell to mute. About three and a half megabytes, macOS 15 or later, on the Mac App Store. The faces are drawn in code rather than stored as images, so each is sharp at any size.
Mantel
Warm brass bezel, cream enamel dial, blued-steel hands, Roman numerals. It borrows from the mantel clock: the small clock made to sit on a shelf above a fireplace, where it could be seen from a chair and heard from the next room. It's the warmest of the four, and the one that looks least like software.
It suits a wooden desk, a room with a lamp on, and either Grandfather or Westminster. If you want the clock to feel like an object that was already in the house, start here.
Station
Matte black, crisp white sans numerals, a red second hand sweeping the dial. It borrows from the railway dial: a clock built to be read at a glance, from a distance, by someone with a train to catch. The red hand is the useful part — you can see that the clock is running without reading the numbers.
It suits a working desk with paper on it, and Ship's Bell or Westminster. It's the face for someone who wants the time plain and doesn't need the room to be warm about it.
Chronometer
Brushed steel, a guilloché dial, subsidiary seconds. It borrows from the marine chronometer: the instrument made to keep time at sea, where the seconds dial was the thing you watched. The smaller seconds ring is the tell; it makes the face look measured rather than decorative.
It suits a desk where something is being measured — a workshop, a studio, a room with a notebook open. Pair it with Temple Bowl if you want one note, or Grandfather if you want the count.
Nocturne
Dark ceramic, luminous indices. It borrows from the night watch: a clock for the hours when the room is dark and someone is still awake. The indices hold a little light and give it back slowly, so the face is legible in a dark room without becoming a lamp.
It suits a bedroom, a dark study, or anyone who works late. Temple Bowl is the natural bell — one struck note, a long time leaving — with the volume low and quiet hours doing their job.
Why four and not forty
Because a clock is not a catalog. Four faces cover four kinds of room: the warm one, the working one, the measured one, the dark one. More would be a theme pack; four is a choice you can make in a minute and then stop thinking about.
They're all the same clock underneath. The face changes; the bells, the quarters, the counted hour and the quiet hours don't. Horologe is $5.99 once. The Mantel face in particular has its own piece, and what to look for in a desktop clock is the buyer's guide if you're still deciding. Choosing a chime is the other half of the choice.
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