FAQs
Can I buy it today?
Not today. The app is built and it rings, but it hasn't been submitted to the App Store, so there's no link and no till. It'll be $5.99, paid once. If you want to know the day it goes up, write to hello@tryhorologe.com — that's a mailbox, not a list.
Why would I pay for a clock?
For the same reason there's a clock on your kitchen wall and a clock in the phone in your pocket. One of them is a readout; the other is an object you chose. Horologe is the second kind. It's drawn carefully, it strikes properly, and it costs $5.99 once.
macOS already shows me the time. It's in the corner right now.
It is, and you haven't looked at it in an hour. It tells you silently, and only when you look — and looking is a decision, so at 2:40 on a deep afternoon you don't make it. Horologe isn't a replacement for the menu bar clock. It does the job the menu bar clock can't do, which is tell you the time when you've forgotten to ask.
Isn't a chiming clock annoying?
It's a sound, so it can be — we'd rather say that than pretend otherwise. Two things keep it from becoming one. The bells decay like real metal instead of stopping dead, so they leave the room rather than interrupt it; and every part of it comes off. Quarters off, hour only. Volume down. Quiet hours. One click in the menu bar and it's silent. Our honest advice for the first week: hour strike only, volume low. If you want the quarters after that, you'll know.
Will it ring in the middle of a call?
It might, and Horologe won't know that it did. It can't see your screen, read your calendar or hear your microphone, so it can't tell a meeting from an empty room. That's why silencing it is deliberately the easiest thing in the app: click the bell in the menu bar and it's quiet. Quiet hours cover the same stretch of every day without you thinking about it. We'd rather it be deaf and easy to hush than have it watching you to guess.
Which chime should I start with?
Grandfather, hour only. It's one deep strike, counted out, and it's the easiest thing to live with. Westminster is the full ceremony and it's wonderful, but give yourself a week before you switch the quarters on. If a tune is more furniture than you want, take Temple Bowl: one note, and a long time leaving.
What does it need from my Mac — permissions, an account, the internet?
None of the three, and it never will. Not one permission prompt, now or later: no Accessibility, no Input Monitoring, no Screen Recording, no microphone, no files, no location. It never posts a notification either — a notification has a sender, a subject and an implied reply, and the hour has none of those. And it makes no network calls at all: no account, no sync, no telemetry, no crash reporting, no license check, no update ping. It is not that we choose not to send anything, it is that there is nothing in the app that could. Which is also the answer to whether it'll keep working: there's no server to switch off, nothing to deprecate, and no company that has to still exist. If we vanished tomorrow, the copy on your Mac would strike four this afternoon. It reads the clock your Mac already keeps, and it'll do that on an air-gapped machine forever.
Are the bells recorded from real bells?
No, and that's deliberate. A recorded bell is a hundred takes, several hundred megabytes, a license agreement, and the same tenth stroke forever. Every Horologe strike is computed the moment it sounds, from a bell's actual partial structure. It means no sample library, no download, no two strikes exactly alike, and an app that weighs about two megabytes instead of a hundred. Play the bells on the front page and judge for yourself; that's what they're there for.
Is there a trial?
No, and there doesn't need to be — the product is a sound, and the sound is on the front page. Choose any face, choose any bell, strike it, and hear on your own speakers exactly what you'd be buying. There's nothing behind the purchase the page can't show you first.
Can I get a refund?
Yes. If you bought from the Mac App Store, Apple handles refunds directly and is quick about it. If you bought direct, write to us and we'll send the money back without a form and without an argument. It's $5.99; nobody should have to fight over it.
Is it a subscription? Will the price change later?
No, and no. One payment, no renewal, no tier above this one, no feature held back for a Pro version. There's no server to pay for, so there's no reason to charge you again.
Is there a discount?
No. It's $5.99, once. That is the discount.
Will you add more bells and faces?
Perhaps, slowly. A new bell isn't a recording session, it's a tuning problem — the partial ratios and the decay rates have to be found and argued over until the thing rings true, and most attempts sound like a doorbell. Buy Horologe for the five bells and four faces in front of you. If more arrive they'll be free, and they'll arrive when they're right.