Add a live analog clock to your Windows Phone 8.1 Start screen with this cool app

One of the neat benefits of Windows Phone 8.1 are Tiles that can update every minute, instead of the previous 30 minutes in 8.0. Don’t worry, it won’t drain your battery either. That loosening of restrictions has allowed for the release of such apps as Clock Hub and TimeMe. Now, we have a charming analog clock to add to the mix.

Analog Clock Tile is a simple app. You download it and pin to your Start screen; that’s it. Currently, only small and medium Tiles are supported, though wide Tile support is coming. What’s more, Web-ideja d.o.o., who is behind the app, wants to hear from you on suggestions. Knowing you folks, you’ll have a dozen or so to volunteer, so get at it!

Sure, clocks are redundant on Windows Phone with Glance, Lock screen and one in the system bar. But we’re not here to preach and tell you how to design your Start layout, that’s what makes Windows Phone personal. Heck, I happen to like these apps because on a Lumia 1520 you sometimes need something to offset your design choices, and these things work well for that purpose.

And yes, Analog Clock Tile is a universal app, so expect a Windows 8.1 version sometime soon, as well.

Pick up Analog Clock Tile here in the Store for free. Windows Phone 8.1 only.

Read more at the developer’s blog about the release here.

Daniel Rubino is the Editor-in-chief of Windows Central, head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been covering Microsoft since 2007 when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, laptops, next-gen computing, and for some reason, watches. Before all this tech stuff, he worked on a Ph.D. in linguistics, watched people sleep (for medical purposes!), and ran the projectors at movie theaters because it was fun.

114 Comments

If this one refresh every second then this is very cool.
I guess cause is WP8.1 exclusively
No, only every minute.
Yes, WP needs tiles to be Able to refresh every tenth of a second... Just think of the possibilities...
......................
Developers should at least be able to add graphics like Cortana's live tile has... MS needs to let up on the functionality..
My symbian phone has analog clock and has a third hand
My cat has white paws...
Lol xd
Lmao
I was just joking... Yeah, a second hand, or a true digital clock on real time would be cool... And, I'm kinda mad that WP can't do this,,,yet... But, the functionality wasn't priority at the time... I'm sure it will come in due time...
yeah symbian still has "some" great features that no other platform has......
Sounds pretty useless on a live tile - if you want such small measures of time just download any one of the hundreds of clock and stopwatch apps
Not for time, bone head... Lol!!
I'm just thinking of other graphical implementations... The sky would be the limit with this... Also, if MS would allow simple graphics like Cortana's circle, or give developers the capability to make apps so that we can ad GIF's to live tiles.. Imagine the Facebook tile transparent with the "F" spinning, or flipping.. That would give the "F" the effect that it's floating within the tile, and would open up a whole other level of dimension to the start screen... Just imagine what WPC could do to their tile with graphic support... Awesome!!!
...........................
Imagine if your XB avatar could be moving, and playing around, behind transparent tiles??... Now, Android fans would have to admit that WP is awesome.. That would be the coolest thing since Cortana... Wait, Cortana behind the tiles?.. Simply, Amazingly, Awesome!!...
I would hate this, it gets to far from the modern UI. Younger have developers going crazy, making it look bad on transparent, way to busy with useless information, etc..
You would hate it... Ok..
Some people hate Facebook. Some people could care less about camera technology.. Some people hate start screen backgrounds... I just never understood peoples points when they express how they would not like to use a certain feature... What's the point of that?
................Edit:::
Wait a minute... Useless information❔How so?... WPC cound have new articles scrolling, while flipping through all of the images in articles... Weather apps could have animated weather conditions, and animated radar, or weather alerts.. News apps could play reports right on the start screen!! That's bad ass!!... You could tap a tiny icon for audio.. Talk about a live tile that you don't have to always open a app for!!.. This is the point of WP! This is Metro at it's finest... I have to seriously disagree with you... You want this!... Lol!
I replied to DarwinPurol who *was* referring to time, bone head... Lol!! Having an animated gif is not the same as having a tile that updates itself every second. An animated gif would be a static set of frames that loop through themselves endlessly. A tile that updates itself per second could theoretically update with any information on the fly, such as stock data or any required real-time measurements. I think it would be "possible" but a nightmare to manage with battery and heat due to all the processing... 1 minute polling is quite reasonable. Basically, everything you described I would turn off in an instant. I've unpinned almost every tile that flips or transitions in some way. The only one I've kept is the "Me" tile, a tile for my gf, and the "Pictures" hub. Everything else must be static or I won't pin it. Simply for the reason that the start screens are already pretty chaotic with different sized tiles and tile-based notifications... the last thing I want is things moving and jostling around fighting for attention. It's like the bad old days of the web with flashing text, scrolling marquee text, and adverts that jiggled or moved around.
Lol.. Yeah, I know they're different.. I'm just stating some different functionality that would be cool to have.. And of course I always think that the option to not use certain features should always be there.. Not everyone would care for this... But, some of us like this kind of thing.. It's all about options..
Personalization
Personalization
Yeah I love this. Downloading now. Thanks Dan :D
+920 8.1
+8X 8.1 ;)
+1020
+820*8.1
+620 8.1
+1520
+720
+ICON
Sweet ! I do love an analog clock. Hope it works better than Clock-Hub & TimeMe .
Thanks Daniel
+1. Not much luck with the others on my 925. Sent from my Moto X!
Yep yep, even the HTC clock is not working properly (which is why I'm looking for an alternative)
Clock Hub worked perfectly when he removed the weather function. I saved the 12BM version but it would not install. Let's hope this works. I suspect it will. Really looking foward to a simple, working digital clock tho.
Nah ... I disabled the weather & it still lags behind 50% of the time ... TimeMe is more like 80% more accurate, even with the weather enabled.
I've been running this one for the past few hours & so far so good.
I have an app that I've used since WP 7 and it updates more often than every half hour... It's called "Pro Sports Scores" and it updated every time I unlocked my phone with 7, 8, and now 8.1. It was (and still is) one of the most reliable live tiles I have. Can someone explain how this was possible if there was a limit?
push notifications can be more frequent, but you wouldn't want that for a clock
It only has a live tile though. No notifications. Maybe there was some sort of loophole for non-text, "counter" tiles? EDIT: Never mind. I thought about the conecpt of a "push notification" and realized my assumption of the term's definition was flawed.
Could you just have Cortana email you every minute with the updated time and then read your email to you?
See the developers broke in Disney land and stole some magic, then casted a spell and there app. That's how it works since windows phone 7.
I hope it works well! Time me and click Hub are Clichy but I still use them!
Double Extra Wide tile please and allow me to press the clock tile and take me to any app I want. Then I can tie it to the Nokia App Folder app. Make it so.
Make it make me a sandwich while you're at it.
It doesnt work on my lumia 1520 just the sign of loading is appearing
Just pin it no need to open via app list. Edit: Oh now it opened, when I open it via the app list I got the loading page then it closed as well. So I just pinned it, then unpinned it by mistake. Pinned again and got load screen on the tile and when tapped it loaded the app + plus now loads via app list as well. However you cannot pin with-in the app (just contains text and a feedback button).
That's really wanted to show as a app
With the status bar omni present useful ness is little.
Kind of strange that an app that does so little and is 11MB?
The same was with Clock Hub. May be because it's universal, but it will probably slim down on an update.
I first thought that it was on lock screen live analog clock - dynamic lock screen :D
My exact thought too. It just doesn't seem right to me so I deleted it after downloading.
The tiles are not drawn automatically, basically the tile has a transparent PNG file to represent every different time of the day 12 * 60 = 720 transparent PNG images, multiply that by 3 if they are specific to the tile sizes and multiply that by the amount of different clock types (if there are different clock types) TL;DR : Mucho embedded images make app big !!
Your answer makes good sense to me (I didn't know that was how it had been implemented). I installed it again and it works very well (unlike the other clock apps under 8.1) Thanks, I am a happy camper now
Just got one idea for developer to make app like this for multiple world clocks on one wide tile
Although the concept is nice, I was shocked to see app size of 11 MB.
I guess it bundles images for every minute in 12 hours. So may be clock faces are not being drawn on the fly?
You can only show xaml, so you need to use images for the clock, can't do vector drawing.
Downloaded but always"loading", turn off battery saver but still same
Tried tapping on the pinned tile?
just allow it to work background even when battery saver on
Where can I find that wallpaper?
On a Galaxy S5
Why am I just hearing about live tiles updating every minute with 8.1. I haven't had a weather app with a working live tile pinned to start for years because fo the 30 minute limitation. I hated seeing the live tile temp then opening it to see the updated (and 5 degrees higher) temp. It just...bugged me. So I pin Bing Weather or Amazing Weather HD directly to the start screen and don't enable the live tiles. Which of the new crop of updated weather live tiles are updating at shorter intervals?
None yet. We'll let you know if/when that happens.
What part of the world changes temperature by 5 degrees in 30 minutes? This is just my opinion, but I have never experienced weather so dynamic that a tile updating every 30 mins was not sufficient to know well about whats coming.
That isn't out of the question some days right after the sun comes up and I'm leaving for work. Still, it's the principle. :) I've been known to forget an umbrella on a cloudy day, so a tile showing that it's raining and one showing cloudy could mean the difference between me getting wet and staying dry if I have a quick errand to run.
And so Live Tiles/Widgets emerge...
Quickly battery discharging in Win phone 8.1 update..
Hard reset the phone. Helps most of the folks.
What does hard reseting do exactly?
You can think of it as formatting your hard drive and installing OS from scratch. With this analogy in mind, don't forget to back up important stuff and use the in-built phone backup (found in Settings) so that you can restore your Start screen and most of the settings while your apps will automatically download after the reset and you won't have to pick them up one by one.
My only problem is the max background task limit. Once you get to a certain unknown amount of background agents on WP8, then they all seem to stop working. You then get broken or frozen tiles and no more notifications
If this is still the case with Windows Phone 8.1 It may be enough to push me to the dark side of Android, this has been a problem since WP7. I guess time will tell as I continue to add more background tasks to WP8.1. It wouldn't be as much an issue if the OS would actually inform you that you've hit certain limits and not allow you to add anymore background tasks without removing others.
Yeah. I don't dare put too many on. I disallow everything that I really really don't need. The biggest annoyance is that no one seems to discuss this.
Semi related, a WP7 developer unlocked device could install a clock app via xap that would update its tile in real time. So does that mean the background restrictions are merely "do it or we reject you from the store"? I would have thought there were actual restrictions in place. Also, I didn't get the memo. 8.1 can update tiles more often?
The APIs weren't optimized in 7.x for one-minute updates, so yeah, apps were rejected if they did that. And yes, 8.1 Tiles can update more often, if the developer implements it.
You could do a lot of things faster than allowed on sideloaded apps in WP7, like background tasks that ran more frequently than every 30 minutes. You just couldn't submit them that way.
Ohh My. I had just settled on a nice tile layout. Now I have to switch it all around. This is a sharp look!
Daniel please upload your background on wpcentral
This is class, well done developer!!
Too bad my 1320 is having problem installing apps. The phone basically useless now.
What's the problem?
What problems? Try resetting the device
You need to clam down n tell what's the problem with ur phone
Wallpaper please
Are there any clocks on W8?
I don't think so cause it would only update every 30 minutes thus defeating the purpose of a clock.
Daniel, Which is the green phone in the picture? Polyscreen makes some terrific wallpapers by the way though I am working hard on getting a image like the one you have.:)
11MB for a clock tile???
Where's the dynamic lock screen? The one that was shown in build 14?
I'm curious about that as well.
This looks like a great app. Someone had mentioned background tasks; I saw on a screen recently when adjusting my 8.1 application tasks that the new limit is 20 simultaneous background tasks (up from 15 in wp8.) I too juggle background tasks to select which live tiles I need to keep updating.
Best disable the redundant ones, that is the first thing I did after installing 8.1.. Well not quite the first thing lol.
Awesome app looking good in my L520
I'm only seeing analog clock live tile in the store . Doesn't sound correct as its getting terrible reviews for not updating.
It works fine.....just allow it to work background even when battery saver on
Nah you're looking at the wrong one. It's called "Analog Clock Tile", with just 4 ratings so far for an average of 5 stars. Just follow the link from this article.
Thanks , got it. gonna give it a spin, but honestly with the other time options already on screen/lock screen etc. i may not keep it due to the space it takes up. glad to see someone finally got a clock tile that actually works tho.
Nice....now we want more live tile sizes larger thn large n semi larger tile which should be bit broader thn medium tile.
Can devs use animated tiles, or is that a Cortana-only feature? Because it would be cool if this analog clock had a revolving second hand.
Does it actually work? I'm yet to find a clock tile that actually works properly on 8.1. The HTC one doesn't update, and the two clock apps mentioned on here recently don't work properly either. How hard can it be?
I was wondering when an analog clock would pop up in the store but I was hoping for a better looking clock, maybe with numbers or even just a dot in the numbers place. Maybe the dev will add a few different clocks in time. I do like having a clock pinned to my start screen. For now I think I'll stick with TimeMe but I'll keep an eye on this one for when a better looking clock is added.
+1
Won't download for me and I'm knee-deep in Wi-Fi
me too
Looks a bit like Cortana circle styling on tile
Best regards to one of the best developer from Croatia.
why 11mb for app wich do absolutelly nothing ? i have to read more about before installing 11mb icon file ....
This background it's amazing! Can you post it please ?
I used Arnold Vink's side-loaded clock for several weeks and I can tell you one thing. A clock that doesn't keep accurate time is not really a clock. 90% of the time doesn't cut it. You will be constantly glancing up at the real clock to check it. Clock Hub without the weather actually worked. Alas, he insists on putting a weather function in it which breaks it. I doubt Arnold's clock will ever be reliable. Too many functions. BTW, I saved the working 12MB Time Hub version but it would not install. Turn off automatic updates, is my advice. Looking forward to a simple, digital clock that works.
Analogue is a nice app, sits nicely above simple calendar wide tile... TAB give the developers a break, I used sideloaded Time me version on WP8 and it was flawless. Some issues in 8.1 but it was updated today.. seems stable so far! Posted via the WPC App for Android!
Clock hub and TimeMe were such a disappointment! I hope this one works well on my 920.
This' what i want!
Junk
I don't see the appeal of this - digital clocks are vastly superior to analogue clocks. I can tell the time instantly / at a glance on digital, but have to spend several seconds deciphering analogue ones... probably because I use them so infrequently and hate them with a passion.
I downloaded it on my 1520 & it did go up to wide tile for me except it's flipping like how the people tile does. The clock is working by the way & it's transparent of course.
The standard alarm clock should have a analog clock live tile!
Yes it should
This clock keeps accurate time and does not disappear. Turn off auto updates. When a new version comes out, sort reviews by most recent to discover if the developer has broken it ala Time Hub. Saving the file so you can go back won't work.
Having a clock on the Start Screen isn't as redundant as one would intially believe. The tiny clock that's on the screen washes out on sunny days, so having one that's resistant to that is really helpful. That said, I had this clock and it was consistently unable to keep time. You had turn off the battery saver and ensure the app was running in the background, move the Start Screen to "jumpstart" the app to the right time, if not totally uninstall and reinstall the app. I threw up my hands in depair until I found Clock Hub. Clock Hub is a digital clock for the Start Screen in Windows Phone 8.1, it's free and does exactly what a clock is supposed to do--keep the correct time. As much as I like the analog design, I'm going to stick with Clock Hub's digital format until the day comes when either Clock Hub or another app comes up with an analog clock that actually works.

Show more comments

Windows Central Newsletter