iClock and Horologe: which one you want
No — Horologe isn't an iClock replacement, and it isn't trying to be: it's $5.99, paid once, and it does one thing — a desk clock that strikes the hour. iClock is $4.99 and does a great deal more.
The specification for this side, in prose: 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 menu-bar bell to mute. About three and a half megabytes, macOS 15 or later, on the Mac App Store.
What iClock is
iClock is a menu-bar clock with a toolbox behind it. Its own page lists a world clock with time zones, alarms, countdown timers, a stopwatch, calendar access, floating clocks for cities, moon phase, a global scheduler, and optional chimes — Big Ben or other sounds on the quarter, the half, and/or the hour. The page lists version 5.8.96, released 25 September 2025, and support back to Mac OS X 10.11. On the Mac App Store it's $4.99.
That's a lot of clock for a dollar less. If your day runs across time zones, or you want an alarm you can set from the menu bar, iClock is the sensible buy.
What Horologe is
Horologe is a clock on the desktop, not in the menu bar. It sits in front of your wallpaper and behind your windows, never takes focus, and can be dragged and resized like an object on the desk. It has five bell voices and four faces, and the only thing it does with time is mark it: the quarters if you want them, the hour counted out either way.
The bells aren't recordings. Each strike is computed the moment it sounds, from a bell's own partials, so it decays the way metal does rather than stopping dead. How that works is its own piece. The chiming clock app page is the broader buyer's answer if you want the whole spec in one place.
The honest comparison
iClock wins on features, and it should: world time, alarms, timers, calendars, floating clocks. If you want any of those, buy iClock. It's $4.99, it has a long history on the Mac, and it will do the job.
Horologe wins on one thing, and it's the thing it was built for: a bell in the room, on the hour, with nothing else attached. If you want a clock that only strikes, and a desktop object rather than a menu-bar hub, that's $5.99 once.
The limits, in the same size type: no alarms, no timers, no world clocks, 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 why the menu-bar mute is one click, and why quiet hours are on by default.
Horologe is $5.99 once. If you want the menu-bar comparison instead, read the menu bar clock and the clock behind it; for the desk-clock question in general, what to look for is the longer guide.
Read next: How to make your Mac chime on the hour