Mac clock with sound: ticking, speaking, chiming
There are three kinds of sound a Mac clock can make — a tick, a spoken time, and a bell — and Horologe is the third: $5.99, paid once. It's a desktop clock that chimes the quarters and counts the hour.
The spec, in prose: four faces (Mantel, Station, Chronometer, Nocturne), five bells (Westminster, Whittington, Ship's Bell, Temple Bowl, Grandfather), quarters on or off, the hour counted out, quiet hours from 10pm to 8am, and a right-click on the bell in the menu bar to mute. About three and a half megabytes, macOS 15 or later, Mac App Store.
Ticking
Several clock apps tick, and if the tick is what you want, they're the right place to look. Horologe doesn't have one, and the reason is a difference of intent: a tick is about every second, and a strike is about the hour. The tick is a companion; the strike is an announcement. One is a sound you keep going, the other is a sound that happens. We built the second kind.
Speaking
macOS can already say the time out loud — a free setting that speaks "It's three o'clock" at the top of the hour. It's genuinely good, and if a sentence is all you want, stop there. Our how-to on making your Mac chime walks through the built-in option and what a bell adds to it.
Chiming
A chime is a tuned bell rather than a voice, and it does two things a spoken time can't. It carries — a bell is heard across a room without being addressed to anyone in it. And it counts: on the hour, one strike for one, up to twelve. The quarters play before the count if you leave them on. What those four notes are is its own piece.
Where it sits
At desktop level: in front of the wallpaper, behind your windows, never taking focus. Drag it, size it, and pick one of four faces. The clock is visible without being opened — and that's what makes a bell at the hour land as a fact about the room rather than a message from an app.
The limits, in the same size
No alarms, no timers, no world clocks. It can ring during a call, because it can't see your screen or calendar and won't ask for permission to. Silencing it is one right-click on the menu-bar bell; quiet hours hold 10pm to 8am by default.
Horologe is $5.99 once. If you want a tick or a voice, those exist and are fine. If you want the hour rung like an hour, this is the one.
Read next: A chiming clock app for the Mac