ClockScrambler

ClockScrambler is a lightweight, open-source macOS menu bar utility that covers the system clock with a customizable emoji, digital time, or natural-language clock. It follows the live menu bar background, reacts to privacy activity, and stays readable across wallpapers, Spaces, and full-screen apps.

If ClockScrambler is useful to you, please consider starring the repository. It helps other Mac users discover the project.

Why ClockScrambler?

The macOS clock cannot be freely styled or replaced. ClockScrambler places a small, non-activating overlay above it, giving you control without modifying system files.

• Replace the menu bar clock with an emoji
• Show digital time or a written clock
• Use natural clock phrases in Turkish, Spanish, or English
• Automatically detect a digital or analog system clock
• Automatically size the overlay to cover the original clock
• Override the cover width manually from 44 to 200 points
• Pin the overlay flush to the upper-left or upper-right corner
• Adjust text or emoji size, rotation, position, and opacity
• Match the real clock-area background once per second
• Optional low-resource screen-frame mode with a black fill, subtle stroke, and rounded bottom-left corner
• Show or hide the screen-frame stroke independently
• Refresh automatically after wallpaper and Space changes
• Turn pure black above a full-screen app
• Use calibrated orange while the microphone is active
• Use calibrated purple while screen sharing or recording is active
• Launch as an accessory app without a Dock icon
• Check GitHub releases automatically and install signed updates with Sparkle

Screenshot

Privacy

ClockScrambler is designed to work locally:

• No analytics, accounts, or background services
• The only network request is Sparkle's update check against this repository
• No audio recording
• No microphone permission
• No Screen Recording permission

Microphone activity is detected by reading CoreAudio's device-running state; audio samples are never opened or stored. To match the menu bar, the app reads only the small clock-sized rectangle directly below its own overlay. That image is processed in memory to obtain a median background color and is never saved or transmitted.

Install

Download the app

1. Open the repository's Releases page.
2. Download the latest ClockScrambler-macOS.zip.
3. Move ClockScrambler.app to /Applications.
4. Launch it and click the menu bar overlay to open settings.

The downloadable build is ad-hoc signed but not Apple-notarized. On the first launch, macOS may require Control-clicking the app and choosing Open.

Build from source

Requirements:

• macOS 15 or later
• Xcode with a macOS SDK
• XcodeGen

brew install xcodegen
git clone https://github.com/benfirad/ClockScrambler.git
cd ClockScrambler
xcodegen generate
open ClockScrambler.xcodeproj

Select the ClockScrambler scheme and choose Product → Build.

For a command-line release build:

xcodebuild \
  -project ClockScrambler.xcodeproj \
  -scheme ClockScrambler \
  -configuration Release \
  CODE_SIGNING_ALLOWED=NO \
  build

How background matching works

Every second, ClockScrambler reads the clock-sized composite rectangle directly under its overlay. It discards translucent pixels and uses the median sRGB color, which minimizes interference from the original clock glyphs and status icons. The sample updates when the wallpaper, active Space, appearance, or visible menu bar changes.

If sampling is unavailable, the app falls back to the standard macOS window background color.

Project structure

ClockScrambler/
├── ClockScrambler/
│   ├── AppDelegate.swift
│   ├── Assets.xcassets/
│   ├── Info.plist
│   └── main.swift
├── ClockScrambler.xcodeproj/
├── docs/
├── project.yml
├── LICENSE
└── README.md

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome. Please include your macOS version, display configuration, clock style, and a cropped menu bar screenshot when reporting visual matching issues.

License

ClockScrambler is available under the MIT License.