A Westminster chime for your Mac
Yes — Horologe is a Westminster chime app for the Mac, and it's $5.99, paid once. Westminster is one of its five bells, and it plays the real quarters and then counts the hour, the way the tune was meant to be heard.
The spec in prose: four faces, five bells, quarters on or off, the hour struck and counted, quiet hours silent from 10pm to 8am, and a right-click on the menu-bar bell to mute. About three and a half megabytes, macOS 15 or later, from the Mac App Store — one payment, no subscription.
What the Westminster chime is
Four notes, five short arrangements of them, and a sequence that never changes. The notes sit in E major, and the phrases are always played in order: the first quarter is one phrase, the half hour is two, the third quarter is three, and the hour is four — followed by a deeper bell, an octave below the E quarter, counting out the hour. It was written for a Cambridge church clock in 1793 and borrowed for the Palace of Westminster in 1851, which is how it got two names. Who composed it is genuinely uncertain. We lay out the whole story here.
Hour by hour, on your desk
At a quarter past, four notes. At half past, eight. At a quarter to, twelve. On the hour, all sixteen, and then the count: three strikes for three o'clock. If that's more ceremony than you want at first, it can be hours only for a while, and the quarters switched on when you're ready. It's the same tune you hear from Big Ben; if you want the bell itself rather than the pattern, our guide to hearing Big Ben on your Mac has the live and recorded options.
If it's not the tune you're after
Westminster is one of five bells. Whittington is the other great English change-ringing tune. Ship's Bell counts the nautical watch, one to eight. Temple Bowl is a single struck note with a long decay. Grandfather just tolls, one strike per hour. You can change voices whenever you like; the quarters, quiet hours and volume settings stay where you put them.
At night, and on a call
Quarters through the night are the fastest way to regret a chiming clock, so quiet hours are on by default: silent from 10pm to 8am, and adjustable. Right-click the bell in the menu bar and it goes quiet on the spot. The limits, said plainly too: no alarms, no timers, no world clocks, no ticking, and it can ring during a call, because it can't see what you're doing and won't ask.
Horologe is $5.99, paid once. The first week is best spent on Grandfather, hour only. The quarters are worth waiting for.
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