Needless Clock

People do not open Needless Clock merely to find out the time.

More often, they want the glowing screen beside them to grow quiet without becoming empty: something to glance at between tasks, a little light at night, time passing without hurrying anyone along.

Needless Clock is a collection of living, animated clocks. They all keep the same real time, but each inhabits a world of its own. Fish turn through water, birds arrive from far away, ants hurry under the weight of a treat, cars follow the painted lines of a car park, and a brush writes numerals in water. At the turn of a minute the picture wakes; once everything has found its place, only small movements, wings, shadows and breathing remain.

TIME HAS THIRTEEN PLACES TO GO

Fish gather into figures. Touch the water and those nearby scatter, then swim home along their own curved paths.

Birds perch on five wires. Some leave at the next minute, others find a new place, and now and then a distant bird crosses the clouds. Tap once and the sky sinks beneath the sea, the flock becoming fish of different forms.

Ants carry biscuits, rock sugar, dried fish, winter-melon candy and leaves. Cars pull into bays. Metal blocks fall one by one. These digits are not displayed; they are made.

Lotus Pond, Starry Night and Auspicious Cranes share one frame: brushstrokes paint the time across the water, and cranes fly out of the painting to form the figures.

White sand crabs climb out of their burrows and line up as figures, while a few red crabs wander the beach, slipping into a burrow or strolling past.

Water runs from a brush onto stone and disappears first from the finest ends of the strokes. Oracle bone, bronze, seal and clerical scripts sit beside the hands of Wang Xizhi, Yan Zhenqing and Huang Tingjian, letting one numeral travel through centuries.

A gnomon casts its shadow among the twelve Earthly Branches, its length changing through the twenty-four solar terms. There is also a wall of cooperating clock faces, a luminous word clock, figures revealed by paper and shadow, and mechanical flaps that fall like those once heard in stations and airports.

GOOD JUST LEFT THERE

Swipe to move between clocks. Tap to change a material, colour or world. Or choose a few favourites and let them rotate by themselves, from every minute to every hour.

At night the display can dim on your schedule. Keep the screen awake, or hide the title, date and time zone until only time remains. It belongs on an iPhone stand, across an iPad, beside a Mac workspace, or spread quietly over the television in a living room.

A MOMENT YOU CAN TAKE WITH YOU

On supported devices, Share waits for the next minute. It keeps the stillness before the change and stops after the movement has come to rest, making a short clock film to save or send.

No account, no advertising and no third-party tracking. The clocks and their calculations stay on the device. Location is off by default and, if enabled, is used only to let the car park grow dark near your own sunset.

Supports Reduce Motion and VoiceOver. Made for iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV.

May it do more than tell the time. May it keep the time with you for a while.