Windows Clock

Windows Clock (known as Clock & Alarms on Pocket PC 2000, Alarms on Windows 8.1, and, until July 2022, Alarms & Clock on Windows 10) is a time management app for Microsoft Windows, with five key features: alarms, world clocks, timers, a stopwatch, and focus sessions. The features are listed on a sidebar. The app is similar in functionality and design to the Clock app on iOS.

History

Windows Clock was available on mobile devices for over a decade before it was available on PCs with the introduction of Windows 8.1. The app was originally released as a Universal Windows Platform (UWP) app on December 9, 2013. It was renamed from "Alarms & Clock" to "Windows Clock" in July 2022. Tiles for alarms, timers, and the stopwatch can be pinned to the Start menu. The latest version uses the Universal Windows Platform APIs and adopts the Windows UI theme (dark or light).

Windows Clock is distinct from the Windows taskbar's clock, which has been part of Windows since 1995.

Features

Alarms

Alarms are listed vertically by the time of day and can be activated or deactivated with an ovular on/off switch. Multiple alarms can be selected and deleted simultaneously. Alarms can be created with customizable time, name, recurrence by day of the week, sound, and snooze time. The available sounds are: Chimes, Xylophone, Chords, Tap, Jingle, Transition, Descending, Bounce, Echo, and Ascending.

Alarms are triggered by a special type of toast notification. Due to hardware limitations, alarms cannot always appear on devices that are powered off. For an alarm to ring on a PC that is off, the device must support InstantGo. Prior to the Windows 10 Creators Update, Alarms & Clock was the only app that could produce alarm notifications during quiet hours.

World Clock

The world clock list detects the user's location and displays the local time on a world map. Users can search for additional locations to display. The feature calculates how far ahead or behind other times are from the user's local time and allows comparison of nonlocal times at a specified local time.

Timer

Timers can be created and named, with support for multiple timers running simultaneously. A zoom button replaces the background with Windows accent colors, hides other timers, and enlarges the displayed time. Arrow navigation buttons allow switching between timers in this view. Timers provide notifications when they end.

Stopwatch

One stopwatch may be run at a time. A flag button records lap times, and a share button allows sharing times with other UWP apps. The stopwatch has a resize button that simplifies the interface.

Focus Sessions

The "Focus sessions" feature was first made available in Windows 11 and was backported to Windows 10 with version 11.2205.23.0. It is designed to help users focus on tasks and includes a progress indicator. Focus sessions also integrate with Spotify and Microsoft To Do.

Technical Details