Comparison

Bathyal vs Binary Clock

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Bathyal

Features
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Bathyal is a clepsydra — an ancient water clock — rebuilt for the deep sea. In the bathyal zone there is no day or night. No sunrise, no shadow, nothing to set a clock by. The only light is made by living things. Bathyal is the instrument that keeps time down there: a face of glowing concentric channels where every drop is a second, and time is material. Watch it work: • Each second forms as a drop at the heartbeat and joins the ring • A full ring of seconds distills into one minute — and pours, visibly, down into the next channel • Minutes pour into hours, hours into the day's two halves, days into months — at midnight the whole cascade runs at once • Once a year, the last drop of December sinks past the digits into the abyss, unmeasured Make it yours: • Solid bands or beaded drops, sweeping or pulsing motion • 24-hour or 12-hour time — 12-hour splits the hours at the meridian into a morning ring and an afternoon ring • Calendar rings for the month and year, or a Monday-first week ring whose weeks are spent, not kept • Run the midnight cascade demo any time from the settings On your wrist: • A full-screen water clock for Apple Watch — seconds, minutes, and hours in the same adjacent channels • Add Bathyal as a complication; the live rings sit on any face and rewrite themselves as the day moves. No two times look the same — that is the instrument, not a hand on a circle • Hold the Watch face for settings. Pulse or sweep, 12- or 24-hour time, and an optional Monday-first weekday ring. Hours, motion, and the week calendar also travel from the gear on iPhone On the Lock Screen: • Add Bathyal as a Lock Screen widget — live rings, a different pattern for every minute, the same figure as the Watch complication • Hours, motion, and the weekday ring follow from the gear Quiet by design: • Completely free, no accounts, no ads, no tracking — it never connects to anything • Works fully offline • Keeps the screen awake on a desk or bedside table If the instrument keeps good time for you, you can send a drop — a small tip — and the face answers with the benefactor tinctures: other colors of bioluminescence, and a single grain of sand set on the seabed of the dial. Drops become months.

About

Binary Clock

Features
Read full description

Binary Clock turns your iPhone into a beautiful binary timepiece for your desk, nightstand, or a charging dock in landscape. Read the time the elegant way. Six columns of glowing dots show the hours, minutes, and seconds in binary, floating on a pane of Liquid Glass over slow, living artwork. LIVING BACKGROUNDS Swipe through a gallery of hand-built backgrounds that drift, glow, and breathe: - Aurora, a living color gradient - Cosmos, deep nebula with a twinkling starfield - Borealis, northern lights over a starry sky - Horizon, a cinematic sunset - Ridges, misty layered mountains - Mercury, flowing liquid metal - Artwork, an editorial sun over hills - Contemporary, minimal drifting light - Pattern, a pulsing halftone wave MADE FOR STANDBY Leave it running while charging and the screen stays awake with a calm, always-on display. A matching widget brings the binary clock to StandBy and your Lock Screen. BEAUTIFUL BY DESIGN - A Liquid Glass clock face with refractive, glassy dots - Live local weather and the date - Clean controls that fade away on their own - Portrait and landscape, iPhone and iPad NEW TO BINARY? It is easy. Each column is one digit. A lit dot counts, from top to bottom, as 8, 4, 2, and 1. Add the lit dots in a column and you get the number. You will be reading it in a day. PRO One simple, one-time purchase unlocks every background, color themes, and the always-on standby display. No subscription, ever. Tell the time in binary. Make it art. Terms of Use (EULA): https://policies.superfuturelabs.com/binary-clock/terms Privacy Policy: https://policies.superfuturelabs.com/binary-clock/privacy

Screenshots

Bathyal4 screens
Binary Clock4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is update cadence: Binary Clock at daily against Bathyal's every 4 days. Bathyal's advantage is iOS requirement (16.0 vs 26.0). On price, ads, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Bathyal sells 3 one-off in-app purchases and Binary Clock sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Bathyal ships an update every 4 days, Binary Clock daily. The most recent releases landed on October 6, 2026 and October 7, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard2 real differences · 4 level
Bathyal versus Binary Clock: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterBathyalBinary Clock
PriceFreeFree
Update frequencyEvery 4 daysDaily — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesYes
DevicesiPhone, iPad, Apple Watch — betteriPhone, iPad
Requires iOS16.0 — better26.0
Further details — not scored
Size4 MB7 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperStephen ZinnSuper, Inc.

In-app purchases

3 purchases

Bathyal

One-time3
  • Tip Small$1.99
  • Drop: The Benefactor's Drop$2.99
  • Large: A Current$9.99
1 purchases

Binary Clock

One-time1
  • Binary Clock Pro$2.99

Questions

Is Bathyal free?
Bathyal is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Binary Clock free?
Binary Clock is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do Bathyal or Binary Clock have ads?
Neither Bathyal nor Binary Clock shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Bathyal or Binary Clock?
Bathyal ships an update every 4 days, and Binary Clock daily. Most recently, Bathyal was updated on October 6, 2026 and Binary Clock on October 7, 2026.

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