# Needless Clock — Animated desk & bedside clock > Animated clocks that display time through interactive, artistic visual narratives. (iPhone/iPad app by 路 林.) - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/needless-clock/id6807304015 (this page in markdown: same URL + `.md`) - Developer: [路 林](https://appshunter.io/developer/1896152952) - Category: Utilities, Productivity - Price: Free - Rating: 5.00/5 from 1 App Store ratings - Age rating: 4+ - Requires: iOS 17.0 · 37 MB - Languages: American English, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French (France), German (Germany), Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean and 12 more - Released: 2026-09-03 - Data updated: 2026-09-23 - Monetization: free - User reviews in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/needless-clock/id6807304015/reviews.md ## What is Needless Clock? People do not open Needless Clock merely to find out the time. More often, they want the glowing screen beside them to grow quiet without becoming empty: something to glance at between tasks, a little light at night, time passing without hurrying anyone along. Needless Clock is a collection of living, animated clocks. They all keep the same real time, but each inhabits a world of its own. Fish turn through water, birds arrive from far away, ants hurry under the weight of a treat, cars follow the painted lines of a car park, and a brush writes numerals in water. At the turn of a minute the picture wakes; once everything has found its place, only small movements, wings, shadows and breathing remain. TIME HAS ELEVEN PLACES TO GO Fish gather into figures. Touch the water and those nearby scatter, then swim home along their own curved paths. Birds perch on five wires. Some leave at the next minute, others find a new place, and now and then a distant bird crosses the clouds. Tap once and the sky sinks beneath the sea, the flock becoming fish of different forms. Ants carry biscuits, rock sugar, dried fish, winter-melon candy and leaves. Cars pull into bays. Metal blocks fall one by one. These digits are not displayed; they are made. Water runs from a brush onto stone and disappears first from the finest ends of the strokes. Oracle bone, bronze, seal and clerical scripts sit beside the hands of Wang Xizhi, Yan Zhenqing and Huang Tingjian, letting one numeral travel through centuries. A gnomon casts its shadow among the twelve Earthly Branches, its length changing through the twenty-four solar terms. There is also a wall of cooperating clock faces, a luminous word clock, figures revealed by paper and shadow, and mechanical flaps that fall like those once heard in stations and airports. GOOD JUST LEFT THERE Swipe to move between clocks. Tap to change a material, colour or world. Or choose a few favourites and let them rotate by themselves, from every minute to every hour. At night the display can dim on your schedule. Keep the screen awake, or hide the title, date and time zone until only time remains. It belongs on an iPhone stand, across an iPad, beside a Mac workspace, or spread quietly over the television in a living room. A MOMENT YOU CAN TAKE WITH YOU On supported devices, Share waits for the next minute. It keeps the stillness before the change and stops after the movement has come to rest, making a short clock film to save or send. No account, no advertising and no third-party tracking. The clocks and their calculations stay on the device. Location is off by default and, if enabled, is used only to let the car park grow dark near your own sunset. Supports Reduce Motion and VoiceOver. Made for iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV. May it do more than tell the time. May it keep the time with you for a while. ## Key features - Living, animated clock designs - Interactive visual elements - Customizable clock scenes - Scheduled display dimming - Short clock film creation - No ads or third-party tracking ## Frequently asked questions about Needless Clock ### Does Needless Clock have ads? No, Needless Clock is completely ad-free. The developers state there is no advertising or third-party tracking, ensuring a clean user experience. ### What devices does Needless Clock support? Needless Clock is available on Mac, Apple TV, iPhone, and iPad, making it versatile for various Apple ecosystems. ### How often is Needless Clock updated? The latest version is 1.6, and it was last updated on September 20, 2026. This indicates a recent update, suggesting ongoing development and support. ### What is the age rating for Needless Clock? Needless Clock has an age rating of 4+, making it suitable for a wide range of users, including children. ### Can I customize the clocks in Needless Clock? Yes, you can tap to change a material, color, or world within the clock scenes. You can also choose favorites to rotate automatically. ### Does Needless Clock require an account? No, Needless Clock does not require an account. All clocks and calculations stay on the device, and there is no third-party tracking. ### Can I create videos with Needless Clock? On supported devices, Needless Clock can create short clock films by capturing the stillness before a minute change and the movement after it comes to rest. These can be saved or sent. ### What is the user sentiment for Needless Clock? The app has a perfect rating of 5.0 stars from 1 rating, indicating highly positive user sentiment based on available data. ## Version history (last 5 releases) ### 1.6 — 2026-09-20 This release gives time new places to live. Birds settle on wires and fish descend beneath the water. They are no longer pictures simply following paths: birds beat their wings, look around, take off and land; a fish sends a wave from head to tail and truly swims through a curve when it turns. Each form and colour keeps its own digit. Shade Clock is new. Paper is cut into squares that turn on different axes; cubes roll through light and dark faces; complete figures rotate in from the side. Three structures share one light, and each uses its shadow to reveal the time. Block Clock now wears darker industrial titanium, with narrow highlights, cool side faces, fine joints and contact shadows that set every piece down in space. You can now take a minute with you. Tap Share and Needless Clock waits for the change, records the part worth seeing, and makes it into a film ready to save or send. This release also brings the clock to Mac and Apple TV, with type, composition, controls and pacing remade for larger screens. Animation now draws only when something truly moves, and fish returning home, clock-to-clock transitions, shadows and long-running performance are all calmer and more natural. ### 1.5 — 2026-09-15 The ants, drawn again. All thirty-two pieces of them are new artwork — rounder, softer, and drawn a fifth larger, so you can see what they are doing. They wear the colour they were painted in now, rather than a darkened copy of it, and the biscuit they carry is a plain butter finger. A bar gets half a minute to be carried, which is what one ant pulling on its own actually needs. It used to get fifteen seconds, and the last few bars were still in the air when the minute turned — they arrived in their slots by appearing there. An ant leans into a bend and slows for it. It walks up to the bar it means to lift rather than sliding into place sideways, and it stands with the front of its head against the bar instead of inside it. Two teams that want the same patch of paper no longer both stand on it and wait; one of them sends a single ant to drag from the far end. Ten ants now rather than eight, and one arriving to replace a worker comes in along the left, the top or the bottom rather than filing in from one side. Also: Lattice Clock opens on iOS 17 again, and a car reversing out of its bay signals which way it is going. ### 1.4 — 2026-09-11 Two new clocks, and a time zone of your own. Block Clock — the time is built out of falling tetrominoes, four wells of them, each three blocks square and six high, in an arcade cabinet that also shows the next piece, the date and the seconds. Tap it to change what the blocks are made of: moulded plastic, wood or milled steel. Lattice Clock — strips slide across a perforated panel behind glass, and where two cross you can see the overlap. Tap it and the same time is told another way: forty-eight rods hinged between caps in four lit panels. The ants have been drawn again from above, with legs you can see. They turn on the spot instead of sliding, and the next team sets off while the last is still setting its bar down. Time zone — follow the device, or hold the clock at any offset from GMT, for a room that keeps another city's time. Eleven clocks, thirty-six designs. ### 1.3 — 2026-09-08 The car park works out its own dusk from where the sun actually is, so it darkens when your sky does — early in December, late in June. Turn on the location setting and it follows the sunset where you are. It stays off unless you ask for it, and nothing leaves your device. The ants' biscuits and rock sugar stand a little off the paper, and a bar being carried casts a lighter shadow than one lying on the ground. Nine clocks, thirty-one designs. ### 1.2 — 2026-09-05 Three new clocks, a settings panel, and the app in 22 languages. NEW CLOCKS Sundial Clock - a gnomon's shadow crosses a paper dial in the dappled light under a tree. Clock Wall - a wall of small clock faces turns its hands until the digits appear. Word Clock - a lit glass panel spells the time out in words. Ten clocks in all, up from seven. SETTINGS Dim at night, with your own hours and dimming depth. Rotate through the clocks you choose, from every minute to every hour. Keep the screen on. Show or hide the title, date and time zone. LANGUAGES Now 22, adding German, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Turkish, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Thai, Dutch, Polish, Ukrainian, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and Finnish. ARTWORK Every backdrop redrawn at full resolution: asphalt, warehouse floor, the kinetic wall, the sundial's paper. Five different cars in the car park instead of one, parked differently on every device. Crates in four materials, and a crate keeps its material when a forklift moves it. The worker clock rebuilt as a warehouse floor seen from above. The word clock's lit letters now give off light. MOTION AND FIXES The calligraphy brush paces itself the way running script is written. The kinetic array's hands land the way a geared motor puts them down. Ants carrying neighbouring biscuits take separate routes instead of bunching up, and a biscuit fetched from outside sets off straight away rather than waiting. A carried crate no longer blinks out, and crates sit properly on the floor. A carried parcel turns with the courier carrying it. The time stays readable on an iPad held upright. ## More apps by 路 林 - [Dual Flip Clock](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/dual-flip-clock/id6766014702) All apps by 路 林: https://appshunter.io/developer/1896152952 --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-09-23.*