✨ Glint

An ambient time-awareness clock for people who lose track of time.

Built for the distracted, the hyper-focused, and anyone who looks up and realizes hours just vanished. When you're deep in work — or deep in a rabbit hole — time stops feeling like it's passing. Glint fixes that.

It floats above every window and every Space (like Picture-in-Picture), ticks like a real mechanical clock, and flashes in bold color the moment a minute or hour changes — so time keeps gently tapping you on the shoulder, even when you've forgotten to look.

Website · Download for Mac · Changelog

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Why Glint?

Some of us have no felt sense of time. You sit down to work, blink, and three hours are gone — meetings missed, breaks skipped, the day eaten. A normal clock doesn't help: it just sits there, easy to ignore. You have to remember to look, and remembering is exactly the thing you can't do when you're absorbed.

Glint is ambient time-awareness. Instead of waiting to be checked, it reaches out to you:

• A warm amber → red wash builds up over the final 10 seconds of a minute (a calm peripheral-vision warning that a change is coming).
• A teal burst flashes the whole card when the minute rolls over.
• A bigger orange → magenta burst + a double chime marks every hour — a clear, unmissable "an hour just passed."

You don't have to look. Glint makes you feel time moving — so you stay in control of your day instead of losing it.

And inspired by Time Timer's research — which finds that a visual, number-free depiction of remaining time improves self-regulation and lowers anxiety — Glint can show time as a shrinking ring or disk you simply watch empty, no digits to decode.

Features

• 🪟 Always on top, every Space — borderless floating panel, rides over full-screen apps too (PiP-style).
• 🕐 Big, glanceable face — H:MM large up top, SS + AM/PM below, monospaced so it never jitters.
• 🔔 Real tick-tock — alternating tick (high) and tock (low) every second, plus chimes on the minute and hour. All sound is synthesized in code — no audio files bundled.
• 🎨 Attention palette — high-contrast indigo base with cyan glow, escalating to red as a change approaches and a bold flash at the change.
• ⏰ Interval nudges — pick 15 / 25 / 30 / 60 min and Glint blinks + triple- chimes at each mark: a deliberate "time check / take a break" tap on the shoulder, the heart of staying aware of your day.
• 🎯 Focus blocks — start a 25 or 50 min Pomodoro; a live countdown shows on the face and Glint celebrates with a blink + chime when the block ends.
• ⏱️ Stopwatch — a manual count-up timer (start / pause / resume / reset) shown right on the clock face.
• ⏳ "Time sitting" — optional readout of how long you've been at it this session, with a one-click reset.
• 📞 Auto-mute in calls — silences ticking while your mic is in use, so it never leaks into a meeting (no mic permission needed — it only reads device state).
• ⏲️ Visual time depletion — a shrinking ring around the card or a Time Timer-style disk that empties over your focus block, nudge interval, or the hour. You see time run out instead of reading digits.
• 🔴 Dial Mode — the whole face becomes a Time Timer-style dial: white case, red disk depleting toward 0, a 0–55 minute ring, tick marks and a pointer hand. Pure, number-light, glanceable time.
• 🔢 Number-display modes — Full, Hide Seconds, or Hide All (pure visual, number-free — easiest to feel for time-blind users).
• 🧘 Calm Mode — swaps the alarm-style bursts for gentle depletion, to lower anxiety while still keeping you aware.
• 🎨 Color themes — Indigo, Midnight, Forest, Slate, Crimson.
• ⚙️ Preferences — 24-hour clock, three sizes, three flash intensities; all remembered between launches.
• 🚀 Launch at login — one toggle to have Glint always there.
• 🖐️ Drag anywhere — grab it and move it to any corner.
• 🔇 One-click mute & quit from the menu-bar item.
• 🪶 Tiny & native — pure Swift / AppKit / SwiftUI, no dependencies, no Dock clutter (LSUIElement agent app).

Screenshots

Calm	Buildup (last 10 s)	Minute flash
Ring depletion	Time sitting (Forest)	Number-free disk (Slate)

The change states

State	When	Card	Sound
Calm	:00–:49	Deep indigo, white digits, cyan glow	tick / tock
Buildup	:50–:59	Amber→red wash fades in, glow reddens, border brightens	tick / tock
Minute	minute rolls over	Teal→cyan burst flash	single chime
Hour	hour rolls over	Orange→magenta burst flash (bigger, longer)	double chime
Nudge	your chosen interval	Violet→cyan blink (pulses several times)	triple chime

Install

Download (recommended)

1. Download Glint-<version>.dmg from the latest release.
2. Open it and drag Glint into Applications.
3. First launch: right-click Glint → Open → Open. Glint isn't notarised yet, so macOS asks once. On macOS 15+, if there's no Open button: System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway.

Universal app: runs natively on Apple silicon and Intel Macs, macOS 13 Ventura or later.

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/salahu01/glint-app.git
cd glint-app

# Run straight away (dev):
swift run

# …or build the universal app bundle and the DMG:
./tools/bundle.sh       # -> build/Glint.app
./tools/make-dmg.sh     # -> build/Glint-<version>.dmg

Requires macOS 13+ and a Swift 5.9+ toolchain (Xcode 15+).

Usage

Glint launches into the top-right corner. Control it from the clock icon in the menu bar:

Action	How
Move the clock	Drag it anywhere on screen
Set a time-check nudge	Menu → Nudge Me Every → 15 / 25 / 30 / 60 min
Start a focus block	Menu → Focus Block → Start 25 / 50 min (countdown on the face)
Stopwatch	Menu → Stopwatch → Start/Pause · Reset (count-up on the face)
Show / reset "time sitting"	Menu → Show Time Sitting · Reset Session Timer
24-hour clock	Menu → 24-Hour Clock
Size / flash strength	Menu → Clock Size · Flash Intensity
Color theme	Menu → Color Theme → Indigo / Midnight / Forest / Slate / Crimson
Show visual depletion	Menu → Show Time Depletion
Depletion shape	Menu → Depletion Style → Ring / Disk
Hide numerals	Menu → Number Display → Full / Hide Seconds / Hide All
Calm (low-anxiety) mode	Menu → Calm Mode
Dial face	Menu → Dial Mode
Auto-mute during calls	Menu → Auto-Mute in Calls
Launch at login	Menu → Launch at Login
Mute / unmute ticking	Menu → Mute Ticking (⌘M)
Quit	Menu → Quit Glint (⌘Q)

All preferences persist between launches.

How it works

• Always-on-top: a borderless, non-activating NSPanel with level = .floating and collectionBehavior = [.canJoinAllSpaces, .fullScreenAuxiliary, .stationary].
• Tick accuracy: the loop reschedules itself to the next whole-second boundary each tick, so it fires exactly when the displayed second flips — no drift.
• Sound: AVAudioEngine plays short PCM buffers synthesized at launch — a sine burst shaped by an exponential decay for the clicks, and a fundamental + harmonics ring for the chimes.
• Flashes: SwiftUI color overlays animated on minuteTick / hourTick counters — no window resizing, so nothing clips.

Project layout

See CONTRIBUTING.md for the source layout, build tools and dev tips.

Roadmap

• App icon
• Interval nudges (time-check every N minutes)
• "Time sitting" indicator + reset
• Auto-mute during meetings / calls
• Preferences: sizes, 24-hour mode, flash intensity (persisted)
• Launch-at-login toggle in the menu
• Pomodoro / focus blocks with a visual countdown
• Custom color themes
• Visual time depletion — ring / disk, number-free modes, Calm Mode (Time Timer-inspired)
• Notarization tooling (notarize.sh)
• DMG installer, universal build, release workflow
• Developer ID signing + notarisation (needs a paid Apple Developer account; tooling is ready: SIGN_ID="Developer ID Application: …" ./notarize.sh)

License

MIT © Swalahu · Contributing · Security · Code of conduct