World Clocks
Analog or digital World Clocks
See the time in all Cities and Time Zones
Sharp World Clock is a desktop clock program for Windows. It can display the local time for multiple cities and time zones with correct daylight savings.
You can decide how many clocks you would like to see at any time.
The clocks are resizable without any loss of visual quality (due to the use of hardware accelerated WPF technology).
The main window and undocked clocks are resizable and can be dragged anywhere on the desktop.
To resize the clock(s) move the mouse cursor on top of the window and move the resize handle in the bottom right corner (shows up only on mouse-hover):
Sharp World Clock can show analog clocks (with hands) or digital clocks - or both. You can arrange the clocks in a grid array with adjustable columns and grids or in a horizontal or vertical line, but you can also undock clocks from the main window and position them anywhere on the desktop.
To adjust the columns and rows, open the Settings dialog and look for the track bar on the bottom of the dialog.
To add a clock, select "Add" (the clock will be duplicated and you can then change its city). To remove a clock, select Remove. To undock a clock (detach it from the main window), select Undock. You can later re-attach it by selecting Dock. When near a border, they "stick" to it, to allow for easier positioning.
World Map with Country Borders
Sharp World Clock contains a database with more than 23,000 cities worldwide (all capital cities and cities with more than about 15,000 inhabitants). The data source for the cities is GeoNames.org and the time zone database comes from IANA.org. You can find the desired city by entering the first characters of it in the search field or by selecting continent, country and city. The search field also accepts country names, if you are only looking for the capital city of a country.
The Select City dialog also shows some additional info:
- Name of the current time zone (can change during daylight saving time)
- UTC Offset (Coordinated Universal Time) - more info here
- Local Time Offset (difference to your local time, the system time of your computer)
- Information wheather daylight saving is in place (in the northern hemisphere during the summer, in the south during winter) currently
- The start time and date of the last transition (start or end of daylight saving time) and the next transition
- World Map
- Position of the selected city and country borders
- Earth shadow (the areas which are lit by the sun = day or in the dark = night)
- Position of the sun
- Time of sunrise and sunset (calculated within the program, no internet connection required) and the length of the current day in hours and minutes
- Moon phase with days until next full moon and new moon
- Weather (current condition with temperature and description)
The Office Hours (default is 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.) are a tool to remind you of certain conditions within the selected time span, for instance the time you can call someone or a business is open. It shows up in the info popups that appear on mouse over over the clocks. You can also dim clocks during the "out of office" hours - see Global Settings.
Digital or Analog, Country Flags and more
Every detail of a clock can be changed and adjusted. To simplify the task, there is a gallery with a number of preconfigured design templates where you can see the design live. You can either just apply such a design template to your own clocks or change some of its features, to fit your needs and taste (for instance the color of the city and time labels, to make a good contrast to your desktop color or wallpaper).
You can change these design features of a clock - all functions are explained in the user guide:
- City Label
- Time Label
-
Analog Clock
- Hands
- Second Hand
- Hour Marks
- Minute Marks
- Numerals
- Date Window
- Offset / AmPm
- Face Background
- Country Flag
- Border
- Background
Browse the settings of the gallery clock you like most and change what you need to. Then you can apply the selected design to all clocks in the main window or to the current clock only.
You can add your own design to the gallery or edit and save an existing one. Also you can change the order of the items in the design gallery (buttons appear on mouse hover).
Hint 1: The sizes of the city label and the time label are relative to each other and to the clock size. If you want the text of one label bigger, although the value is already at the maximum - just reduce the value of the other slider and vice versa. The size of the clock as a whole is changed with the handle in the bottom right corner (shows up on mouse hover).
Hint 2: The transparency of colors can be adjusted in the color dialog by clicking "Advanced" and changing the opacity value from 255 to a lower value, allowing for semi- or fully transparent backgrounds.
Design changes can be applied to all clocks in your main window or just one. When you open the dialog from a single (undocked) clock, changes apply just for this clock.
Change Date and Time Format
To change the format in which the digital date / time is displayed, open the settings dialog and select the Format tab. You can select the language for the displayed date / time and one of the predefined date / time formats or assemble a custom format string.
Here is an example for a custom format. Notice that you can add multiple lines to the time label.
UTC and LOC are placeholders for the UTC offset and the local time offset. LOC is a placeholder for an asterisk * if there is daylight saving time.
Words in double quotes ("UTC") mean that the literal will not be parsed, it will show up just as it is written.
You can find a full documentation of the time format strings here.
The date / time format can be controlled with placeholder strings as shown in the table below.
| Placeholder | Symbol for | Format |
| HH | Hour (leading zero) | 24 h |
| H | Hour (no leading zero) | 24 h |
| hh | Hour (leading zero) | 12 h |
| h | Hour (no leading zero) | 12 h |
| mm | Minutes | |
| ss | Seconds | |
| yyyy | Year | 4 digits |
| yy | Year | 2 digits |
| MMMM | Name of Month | long |
| MMM | Name of Month | short |
| MM | Number of Month | leading zero |
| M | Number of Month | no leading zero |
| dddd | Weekday | long |
| ddd | Weekday | short |
| dd | Day of Month | leading zero |
| d | Day of Month | no leading zero |
| xx | Week of the Year | (1..52) |
| xxx | Day of the Year | (1..365) |
| tt | AM/PM | |
| t | A/P | |
| \ | Date Separator | |
| | or New Line | Line Break | |
| UTC | UTC Offset | ±hours |
| LOC | Local Time Offset | ±hours |
| DST | Daylight Saving Time Indicator | * |
| "abc" | Other Characters | (in quotes) |
The line break separator allows to divide the date/time string into two separate lines.
To control 24h / 12h format, change the language from English / US to English / UK and vice versa (assumed you want English as display language).
In the Global section of the settings you can tune the general program appearance and behavior.
- Topmost: clocks are on top of other windows: Never / All Clocks / Main Window / Undocked Clocks only
- Margin: the distance between clocks within the main window (not available for undocked clocks)
- Padding: the distance between the clock and its border
- Transparency: the clocks can be made semi-transparent from 0..90% with the slider
- Opaque on Mouse Over: when the mouse hovers over the clocks, they become opaque
- Theme: sets the color scheme (dark / light theme) for the program interface
- Shading: the level of darkness to overlay the clock controls...
- while "Out of Office" (this time span can be adjusted in the "City" dialog of each clock separately - default is 9 AM to 5 PM
- during "Night Time" (after sunset and before sunrise in the selected city)
- Shade Undocked Clocks: is the shading supposed to affect undocked (single) clocks or not
- Auto Start: sets a shortcut in the AutoStart folder, starting the program with Windows
- Hide on Startup: the program starts in hidden mode
- Sweep Second: the second hand on analog clocks will move gradually, not just once a second (consumes more processor resources)
- Info Popup: shows an info popup window for each clock on mouse-over
- Columns/Rows: this slider controls the arrangement of the clocks within the main window (columns and rows depend on each other and the number of clocks) - not available in the dialog if the calling clock is undocked
Sharp World Clock can stay on your desktop all the time or (at least partially) stay hidden until you need it. There are several ways to control this behavior:
- Click the program icon in the system tray
- Click the "Hide" menu item in the menu of any clock to hide clocks and one of the other methods to show clocks
- Use a keyboard hotkey (Settings -> Control -> Hide / Show Hotkey)
- Undock a clock and select Settings -> Control -> Undocked clock behavior -> Hide / show main window on mouse click
- Double-click the program icon on the desktop
The third option could be the preferred way for a lot of users (can also be combined with a hotkey). This way you can have one single clock (usually with your own local time) in a corner of your main screen and whenever you need to know the time in other places, you just click it to display the main window with the other clocks.
You can transfer your settings from one computer to another.
This includes:
- Selected cities and the design of the clocks (checkbox Clocks)
- Design gallery (all predefined design templates in the gallery)
- General settings (including calendar settings)
- Alarms and alarm settings
- Feeds for the Feed Reader module
If you only want to export or import some of the above, just unckeck some of the checkboxes and only the desired settings will be exported or imported.
Note that you need to activate the license on each computer separately and only 2 installations are allowed per license (1 for business users). If you want to use a license on a different PC you must first remove it from the PC you are currently using it on.
Atomic Time Sync
The Time Check section of the settings allows you to compare the system clock of your computer with an NTP (network time protocol) server. There are many such time servers available, Sharp World Clock uses pool.ntp.org.
- System Time shows the time of your computer clock (the moment the chapter was opened)
- Network Time ist the time from the NIST time server, if it could be connected to
- Clock Offset shows the offset (time difference) of the two clocks (hours:minutes:seconds.milliseconds)
If you find the difference worth correcting, you can press the Synchronize button, so your system clock will be set accordingly.
Notice that correcting the clock should not be necessary in most cases, since Windows has a (default) option to automatically synchronize the system clock periodically with an NTP server, so the system clock should not never be out of synch for more than a few seconds.
Weather Report
Sharp World Clock includes a weather report and forecast function. The weather data is retrieved from a weather service company and the author cannot guarantee that the service will always be available at any time.
The weather report includes the current weather conditions with
- Maximum / minumum temperature
- Humidity
- Air pressure
- Wind speed and direction
For the current day a 3-hours-interval forecast with temperature and weather symbol is displayed, starting 5 AM until 11 PM.
You can switch the temperature from °Celsius to °Fahrenheit, the wind speed from km/h to mph and the air pressure to hPa, mmHg or inHg.
The sunrise / sunset time is shown along with the lenght of day and the moon phase.
Sharp World Clock can show photos of the cities from your clocks. The images are publicly available photos on Flickr.com, which are labeled with the name of the city. Please respect the copyright.
Open the City dialog and select the "Photos" tab. On each page there are 30 photos. You can browse the pages and select the size (small/medium/large) of the thumbnails.
Click a thumbnail to magnify a picture.
You can download a photo (if available) or go to the Flickr website with the displayed image:
Sharp World Clock shows an icon in your system tray. Not all program icons are always visible, so you might have to click the caret to show them, but you can select the always visible icons in the tray icon settings.
- Left-click the icon to hide and show the clocks
- Right-click the icon to display a menu like this:
In the upper part you see the selected cities and the corresponding local time. The other menu items are:
- Converter - shows the time zone converter / meeting planner dialog
- Alarm Center - shows the alarm center
- World Map - shows the resizable world map window
- Calendar - brings up the calendar widget, if not yet visible
- Feed Reader - shows the feed reader dialog
- Anchor (immovable) - when activated, the clocks and the calendar cannot be moved or resized
- Ignore mouse (click through) - when activated, the clocks will not respond to mouse-over and click events any more, you can click through the windows right through to the desktop.
- Show / Hide - shows and hides the clocks, the same es left-clicking the icon
- Center Clocks - moves all clock windows and the calendar to the main screen center
- Info - shows the "Info about" dialog with version and update info and (in the second tab) the licensing functions
- Exit Program - shuts down Sharp World Clock
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