How to read the clock face

The page draws an analog clock from the clock and time zone your device reports: the hour, minute and second hands follow that time, and the digits under the dial repeat the same value so the exact second can be read at a glance.

There is no network time server behind the page — the display is as accurate as the device clock it runs on, and it keeps ticking with the connection switched off.

  1. Read the short hand for the hour. It also travels between the numerals, so at half past nine it points halfway between 9 and 10.
  2. Read the long hand for the minutes: each numeral is five minutes, and each small tick around the edge is one minute.
  3. Take the seconds from the red hand, or from the digits below the dial when you need the exact value.
  4. Use the two lines under the time for the weekday, the date and the time zone the clock is running in.

Where the displayed time comes from

The time source

The hands are drawn from the device clock — the same value the browser hands to any page on the machine. Nothing is synchronised with an atomic clock or an NTP server, so the display is exactly as accurate as the system time it reads.

The time zone comes from the operating system as well, together with daylight saving. A device set to the wrong zone, or to the wrong date, moves the whole dial with it.

Reading the dial

The face is a 12-hour dial: the hands make two full turns a day, so 09:15 and 21:15 look identical. The digits below the dial remove that ambiguity by naming the hour that is actually being shown.

All three hands move continuously rather than jumping once a minute, which is why the hour and minute hands rarely sit exactly on a tick — the behaviour of a mechanical watch rather than a flip clock.

Using it as a desk clock

There is nothing to configure: no start button, no account and no location permission. Leave the tab open and the clock stays current; the page only does arithmetic on the local time.

Nothing is submitted or stored: the clock is computed in the browser, and once the page has loaded it also runs offline, with the hands carrying on from the device clock.

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