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iClock - A more powerful menubar clock Pick of the Week
iClock iconThe macosxhints Rating:
9 of 10
[Score: 9 out of 10]
Find the current menu bar clock somewhat limiting? Wish you could see the date and the time without clicking? Need to know what time it is somewhere else in the world? Want an easy way to animate your desktop with the desktop screen savers hack? If you answer yes to any of these questions, you might want to try out iClock.

iClock replaces Apple's menu bar clock, and adds about 3,000 new features while doing so. You can choose the time/date format for the clock display, along with the font face, size, and color. You can view a list of various locations around the world, and add your own as necessary. You can start a timer to warn you when a certain amount of time has transpired. Open a calendar (whose display is fully customizable, of course) and have it launch iCal (or one of six other calendar apps) when you double-click a date. View running apps in iClock's menu. And much, much more ... in short, iClock will do just about anything you would want a menu bar clock replacement to do. And don't miss the version history neatly hiding in the graphical header of iClock's preferences panel!

iClock is a non-nagging $20 shareware package that's worth a look if you'd like more utility out of your menubar clock.
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iClock - A more powerful menubar clock | 23 comments | Create New Account
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iClock - A _useful_ menubar clock
Authored by: rgray on Aug 13, '03 10:10:06AM

I second this POW! iClock is a great tool. Family in four different time zones is one thing - helps figure out when to phone. Also, I follow Formula1 and this helps to catch each race. An excellent tool. I like having the full date/time in the menu bar in any format I like.



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iClock - A more powerful menubar clock
Authored by: CraigG on Aug 13, '03 10:12:33AM

Alternatively, for a free clock/date thing, configure PTH Clock to %d/%m %H:%M for the time, then None on Toggle Time/Date On and Single Click on Toggle Calendar On.

---
http://www.snubcommunications.com



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iClock - A more powerful menubar clock
Authored by: PancakeMan on Aug 13, '03 11:38:13AM

I second this recommendation of PTH Clock. I have FuzzyClock running, with a customized text to prepend "It's" to the time; then PTH Clock with "on %A %1d %B %y" as the string, both set with matching 12 pt LucidaGrande with shadow.
The result is "It's twentyfive to eleven on Wednesday 13 August 03"
The only thing that beats FREE in utilities is FREE and CUSTOMIZABLE!



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I've tried this, but...
Authored by: gaudior on Aug 13, '03 09:37:57PM

How do you keep PTH Clock from showing the time? I can't get it to display only the date, all the time.



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I've tried this, but...
Authored by: PancakeMan on Aug 15, '03 11:59:38AM

In the "time" box, instead of choosing a time-format option from the drop down menu, just type in the string I mentioned in my previous post.
Hope that helps.



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iClock - A more powerful menubar clock
Authored by: Han Solo on Aug 13, '03 01:17:40PM

I agree: PTH Clock is very well done, quite configurable, and free -- as in "free without any expectation of paying close to 20% of the price of the OS for a menu bar clock," and as in "free of the unbelievable bloat that makes up much of the '3000 new features' of iClock." The features that matter for me are already in PTH Clock.

Granted, iCal integration would be nice, but I don't find I'm missing it. Maybe in OS X 10.4, Apple will better integrate the menu bar clock with iCal and other apps. Until then, I'd concur with some of the others here and recommend checking out PTH Clock.



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iClock - A more powerful menubar clock
Authored by: cruppel on Aug 14, '03 01:04:34AM

heh just what I had in mind...for the cost of some keystrokes in the terminal



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iClock - A more powerful menubar clock
Authored by: diamondsw on Aug 13, '03 10:21:29AM

Sounds nice, but why the heck does a clock let you switch running applications and set desktop screen effects? Features are good when they relate to what your program is supposed to do, but are bloat otherwise. This is more an example of poorly focused design.

Please note that I'm all in favor of utilities providing such features, but they should not be present in a clock!



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iClock - A more powerful menubar clock
Authored by: heyotwell on Aug 13, '03 11:11:32AM

Thanks for the comment about feature bloat. "3000 more features" sounds like the programmers couldn't be bothered to figure out what four or five really matter. That's just lazy and poor design.



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iClock - A more powerful menubar clock
Authored by: jimphelps on Aug 13, '03 11:05:07AM

WClock from Wolfware is a freeware (donations accepted ;-) ) menu bar clock that shows date and time, click for a pop up calendar. I've been running this for months and I like it a lot. Customize colors, fonts, date display.

http://www.wolfware.com/wclock/index.html

- jim



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wClock modifications
Authored by: mclbruce on Aug 13, '03 12:17:19PM

I use wClock as well, with a few modifications:

1. I wasn't happy with having an icon in my dock. After setting all of my options I modified the info.plist file by adding the following:

<key>NSUIElement</key>
<string>1</string>

This turns off the dock icon, as well as all the menu choices! All I have left is the date and time, but that's all I want. You could keep an unmodified copy of wClock, call it "wClock settings," and use it to change the settings. Just quit the current running wClock in Process Viewer before running "wClock settings."

2. The brushed look for the pop-up calendar wasn't attractive to me, so I changed it with Apple's developer tools.

This may seem like a lot of trouble, but modifying wClock was a great way for me to apply what I have learned from reading MacOSXHints. Details for making both changes are available on this site.



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iClock - A more powerful menubar clock
Authored by: TTop on Aug 13, '03 12:08:33PM
I haven't used it, it may be a lovely app, but really $20 for a clock app? For $5 I'd consider it, but $20 for a clock is just too much.

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Why not just fix the regular clock?
Authored by: jolshefsky on Aug 13, '03 02:11:17PM
Ok, so it's a really hackish hack. And all you get is that you can see the date in the menu clock.

Here's what I just did:

  1. In terminal:
    cd /System/Library/Core\ Services/Menu\ Extras/Clock.menu/Contents/Resources
  2. Change to the directory of your language. For English, cd English.lproj.
  3. I needed a way to edit the root-owned Localizable.strings file, so I just did:
    sudo cp Localizable.strings ~/loc.txt
    open -a /Applications/TextEdit.app ~/loc.txt
    You can edit the file with any Unicode-compatible editor, and TextEdit was an easy choice.
  4. Modify the entry MBC_CLOCK_FORMAT_STRING to include the date in the format you want. I changed it to "%a %time%p %b-%e" which displays the 3-letter month, a hyphen, and the day-of-the-month after the time. You can test what the date will look like with the date command as in:
    date +%b-%e
    which will display the date in the format indicated after the plus-sign (+).
  5. Save the file.
  6. Copy the file back into place with
    sudo cp ~/loc.txt Localizable.strings
  7. The easiest way I found to restart the menu clock was to log out and log back in again. I assume you can kill some process then restart it, but I was too scared to try.

In the end, voila! The date is displayed in the menu.

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re: Why not just fix the regular clock?
Authored by: mclbruce on Aug 14, '03 12:54:50AM

Nice modification! If I had known about this earlier i wouldn't have spent so much time modifying wClock :-)



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Why not just fix the regular clock?
Authored by: Frederico on Aug 14, '03 12:19:53PM

Personally I prefer the quicker way:

1) Open a Terminal Window
2) type:

defaults write .GlobalPreferences NSTimeFormatString %y%m%d %1I:%M:%S

(for more information on possible settings, type 'man strftime')

3 Open System Prefs > Date & Time > Menu Bar Clock
4) Toggle the 'Show clock in menu bar' checkbox OFF, then back ON.

CAUTION: subsequent use of any settings in the Date & Time Prefs Pane will override your settings.

HINT: you can AppleScript the changes in case you want to rapidly add such changes to a new user environment, or when you have to delete your .GlobalPreferences file due to corruptions, or when you forget the above caution. (;

do shell script "defaults write .GlobalPreferences NSTimeFormatString %y%m%d %1I:%M:%S"

(the above should appear on one line)

Explore GUI scripting to automate the menubar toggling, or simply logout/login.



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Why not just fix the regular clock? I'd like to but...
Authored by: rgray on Aug 26, '03 10:01:29AM

I did this...
[Robert-Grays-Computer:~] me% defaults write .GlobalPreferences NSTimeFormatString %y%m%d %1I:%M:%S

And got this....
2003-08-26 09:59:07.106 defaults[422] Unexpected argument %1I:%M:%S; leaving defaults unchanged.

?????



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Why not just fix the regular clock? I'd like to but...
Authored by: wardy on Aug 28, '04 04:02:49AM

I think you might need "quotes" around the value with a space imbedded.

Still, I tried it but it didn't work. Haven't given up yet though :)



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PTHClock - Free
Authored by: CyborgSam on Aug 13, '03 02:13:55PM

I've been using PTH Clock and prefer it over wClock. It has version checking in addition to all the usual preferences.

http://www.pth.com/PTHClock/



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PTHClock Keeps Me Happy
Authored by: harttj on Aug 14, '03 07:48:24AM

Hi!

I just have to add my voice to the PTHClock, as well as PTHPasteboard as well. It gives me almost everything I want at a price that is just hard to beat. Maybe the pick of the week needs to look a comercail vs opensource. It is very hard to compare the two, when money funds one, and love the other.

Check out PTHClock as it is well worth it.

T.J. Hart



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iClock - A more powerful menubar clock
Authored by: magir on Aug 14, '03 08:59:15AM

I really like iClock. The timer is great for people drinking (or making) much tea (that's why 2 and 3 minutes is in the timer menu - I needed it to time my black tea :-). The time zones connected to the weather at that location is useful, too.

The only problem with this software - it's too expensive! Perhaps I would pay 10 bucks for it but 20 is defiantly too much.

By the way - Although it is "non-nagging" some features are disabled after approx. 14 days.



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iClock - A more powerful menubar clock
Authored by: Ganymede on Aug 14, '03 10:28:17AM

Gosh, how lucky I am to be able to throw away an extravagant $20 on a mere clock app. Oh, of course, to me it is a nifty controller app - with a fully customizable date-clock on top. I mean, if it were just a clock app, why it would have terrible feature bloat, wouldn't it!
Since I can decide what items appear in the menu, I just liposuct that bloat away to get the lean, mean clock-PLUS that suits me. I guess bloaty is in the eye of the beholder.
Considering the far-ranging, out-of the ordinary, exotic and sometimes downright obscure tips one can find at this site, the 3,000 "more features" seems pretty tame to me (and of course overstated). While not nearly as hip as paring down to the 4 or 5 killer functions (all free, for love, of course - maybe on an empty stomach?), I hardly think it is evidence of laziness (how rude! You didn't even try this app!)
I know I'm kinda old-fashioned, but I like to read those words at the bottom of the registration screen: "Thank you for supporting Mac software."
I do hope that some of the hard-earned $Jacksons$ y'all saved from a bloated software buying binge got redirected to the worthy folks at MACOSXHINTS. Some of the hints here have saved me dozens of hours of frustration and wasted time - worth WAY more than my lunch money. Thanks plenty, Rob - I vote for your orignal POW: 9 out of 10.
By the way, anyone ever heard of CopyPaste? Oh, well never mind - it prolly has too many features.

Ganymede
(Don't sweat it - we'll all be elegant rubble when the next big one shudders along)



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iClock - A more powerful menubar clock
Authored by: Deut3221 on Aug 14, '03 03:45:03PM

How much overhead memory does iClock consume compared to PTHClock? With a 1000+features, does it drag down the system?



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iClock - A more powerful menubar clock
Authored by: Ganymede on Aug 15, '03 01:05:56AM

I have used Pth clock as well. I try to keep a balance between trying new things, and not jeopardizing my system with which I earn my living. I am not sure how to perform the comparison you mention, but I would be interested to do it.

I have a number of tools like Overseer, iPulse, Perfboard, Process viewer - the ones that kind of insinuate themselves on you. I have the rudimentary knowledge to use them.. I was a power user on system 9, once upon a time, but alas! I am overworked and have to relegate my new life as unix geek to the wee hours.

My main machine is a 733 G4 ("Tangent"??) with 512MB ram, a couple of monitors, and firewire drives. I use my old PowerTowerPro with G3 upgrade as my home office webserver, and tool around the house with a Tibook on an airport card. (I still have the Centris and the SE/30, though I hardly ever turn them on...)

If you give me the fly-by for a back-to-back comparison, I'll post the results, and we'll see just how bloated my pretty clock really is!

G



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