Hands vs Backtick
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Hands
Design and customize your own analog clock widgets for your Home Screen. Choose from various hand and numeral styles, colors, and sizes. Share your creations with the community and explore designs made by others.
- Design custom analog clock widgets
- Configure hand and numeral styles
- Adjust size, weight, and colors
- Use catalog clocks as starting points
- Browse and share community designs
- Send clocks to friends
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The analog clock workshop. Design your own clock widget, then put it on your Home Screen. Configure the hand style, numeral style, numeral position, size, and weight, colors, second hand, and more. Start from scratch, or use one of the clocks in the Catalog as a starting point. Browse Community Clocks to see designs other people have made and shared, and share your own back: send a clock to a friend and they can add it straight to their own library. Terms of Use (Apple Standard EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Backtick
Transform your home and lock screens into a functional terminal. Display real-time data like calendar events, weather, and system status, or integrate with your GitHub and focus sessions. Customize with various themes and interactive widgets.
- Functional terminal display
- Live data integration (calendar, weather, GitHub)
- Full-page and console widgets
- Interactive widgets with tap actions
- Customizable themes
- Lock screen and StandBy support
- Shortcuts and Siri integration
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Backtick turns your home and lock screen into a terminal. Not a picture of one — a working one. Panels drawn with hairline rules, a tab bar you actually tap, a cursor that genuinely blinks, and your real life inside it: calendar, reminders, weather, steps, battery — and now your GitHub, your focus sessions and anything your automations want to say. FULL-PAGE WIDGETS (iOS 27) The Terminal fills an entire home screen page — now, next up, tasks, weather and system as one live session. The Console goes full page too, with bit idling above the menu. THE WIDGETS — 35 OF THEM • Terminal — five panels switched by tapping tabs on the widget; small, medium, large and full page • Console — a navigable menu: arrows move, enter selects, esc backs out, without opening an app • git log — your GitHub contribution graph, streak and recent activity • focus — one tap starts a timer, with a Live Activity on your lock screen and Dynamic Island • curl — any number from a JSON endpoint you choose, with a sparkline of recent values • echo — shows whatever you send it from Shortcuts; build automations that write to your home and lock screen • Weather — current, hourly and forecast; the small one pages when you tap it • Clock — a live 7-segment face with ticking seconds, zero battery cost, 12h or 24h • Countdown — days to a date you pick; ticks live on the final day, counts up after • Daylight — sunrise to sunset as a gauge, golden hour, light left • Year Progress — every day of the year as a dot; watch it fill • Elapsed — day, week, month and year as block gauges • Month — the full month with event markers • Timeline — upcoming events with durations drawn to scale • Steps — today's count and distance, with the week as bars • Disk — storage as a block gauge • Moon — tonight's phase as a dot matrix • motd — a daily line from bit, free • bit — a resident terminal creature. It has moods, it types little lines, its heartbeat blinks, and it reacts when you poke it. Bond over time. LOCK SCREEN Nine rectangular widgets (next up, tasks, weather, forecast, hourly, elapsed, battery, daylight, echo), six circular gauges, and inline status lines. STANDBY Charge your phone on its side and the Terminal, Weather, Clock and bit widgets switch to big, glanceable layouts you can read from across the room. THEMES Six full terminal palettes — Dracula, Gruvbox, Nord, Solarized, Catppuccin and Tokyo Night — or classic true black with one of five accent phosphors. Every widget follows instantly. SHORTCUTS, SIRI & CONTROL CENTER • "Set Backtick Message" puts any text on the echo widgets — when you arrive at work, when your battery runs low, whenever • Start or stop a focus session from Siri, Shortcuts or Control Center • Tick your top task, poke bit, or jump to your agenda from Control Center or the Action button BUILT LIKE A TOOL • Tick reminders off from the widget — writes straight to Apple Reminders • Tap a section to open YOUR apps: choose which calendar, reminders and weather apps widget taps launch • Battery, weather and steps refresh in the background through the day • Live clocks, countdowns and a blinking cursor with zero widget refreshes • True black. Made for OLED and dark home screens. PRIVATE BY CONSTRUCTION • No account, no sign-in, no Backtick server — there isn't one • Calendar, reminders, steps and device stats are read on-device via Apple's frameworks • Weather comes from Apple Weather using your approximate location • git log and curl talk only to the addresses you give them; an optional GitHub token stays in your phone's keychain • Nothing is collected. There is nowhere to collect it to. FREE / PRO The Terminal widget, Next Up, the inline status line, motd and the classic amber theme are free forever. One purchase unlocks everything else — every widget, every palette — no subscription, no upsell treadmill. — Privacy policy: https://backtick.app/privacy.html Terms of use: https://backtick.app/terms.html
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is review sentiment: Backtick at 100% against Hands's 50%. Backtick also leads on rating (5.0 vs 2.7) and monetization model (free vs free with in-app purchases). Hands's advantage is update cadence (every 3 days vs weekly). On price, ratings volume, ads and in-app purchases 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
Both are free to download. Hands sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $1.99 per month and Backtick sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Whichever you choose, the download price is not the number that matters.
Backtick holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 2.7. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 3 and 4 respectively. Written reviews point the same way: 50% of Hands's written reviews are positive against 100% of Backtick's.
Hands ships an update every 3 days, Backtick weekly. The most recent releases landed on October 14, 2026 and October 13, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Hands | Backtick |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 2.7 (3 ratings) | 5.0 (4 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 50.0% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 3 | 4 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 3 days — better | Weekly |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | Yes |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone | iPhone, iPad — better |
| Requires iOS | 26.2 | 17.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 72 MB | 4 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Christian James Sheehan Lowry | Elvis Mederos |
Customer experience
Hands
Backtick
In-app purchases
Hands
- Hands Pro Monthly7 Days trial$1.991 Month
- Hands Pro Yearly7 Days trial$11.991 Year
- Hands Pro Lifetime$24.99
Backtick
- Pro$4.99









