Clocks
The Clocks app transforms your phone, tablet, or Mac into a beautiful clock display, perfect for any home office, bedroom, or studio. Designed with a focus on simplicity and intentional aesthetics, it’s a fresh take on how a clock can fit naturally into your space.
Get to know Clocks
Who’s behind Clocks?
I’m Daniel. I’ve always loved both designing and building things. I started designing as a teenager making MySpace layouts, band t-shirts, and DIY music merch as a musician. That’s when I fell in love with graphic design. Later in college, I pivoted toward UX and web design just as web apps were starting to take off.
My first jobs out of school were actually engineering roles, I have a background in engineering, but I was always someone who wanted to both design and build. Every side project I’ve worked on has been an excuse to flex either the engineering or the design part of my brain. After a few years in the industry, I fully transitioned into product design.
I worked early on at Discord as a product designer, and now I’m at Figma, working on AI. Recently, AI tools have made it way easier and more exciting for me to bring ideas to life. I’ve started using the term “creative momentum” to describe it, not just the short-term creative flow, but the ability to stay excited about a project over a longer period because I can actually see progress. That’s been a huge motivator for me to keep building even after long workdays.
Outside of work, I’m also a dad. I have a two-year-old, so my side project time is very limited ‒ a couple hours a day, max. That’s part of why I’ve become super disciplined about how I spend my time, I try to make every hour count.
What’s Clocks and what’s so cool about it?
Clocks is the first app I’ve ever built completely on my own. I had very little Swift experience when I started, but I’ve always liked brute-forcing my way into learning. It’s just more fun that way. The idea came after I bought a simple phone stand with a MagSafe charger. I liked the concept of standby mode, but it felt boring. Around the same time, I had been learning shaders for a gradient tool I was building for Figma, and I thought it would be cool to bring some of those visuals into iOS.
I built the first prototype in a day ‒ one background and one clock, and the idea kept growing. I had a few old phones lying around, and it seemed perfect to turn them into displays. Originally, I imagined tons of customization options: changing fonts, colors, layouts. But I realized too much flexibility made it hard to control the quality of the experience. I decided to keep it simple: you tap a clock to start using it, or tap again to edit and see changes live.
Every background in Clocks is a Metal shader. That’s part of what makes the app feel so dynamic. I prototyped shaders in Vercel’s v0 before bringing them into Swift, which saved a lot of time. Getting the UX right was a huge focus. When you edit a clock, you’re doing it directly over the live background, without popping into a new view. Making that work, with shaders running underneath, and everything updating smoothly, was way harder than it sounds. But it’s one of the things that makes Clocks feel polished.
The goal wasn’t just to make a clock app, but to design something intentional, something that fits naturally into your setup. I kept seeing the same old flip clocks in workspace photos online. They’re iconic, but it felt like time for a fresh alternative. With Clocks, every background also has a matching screensaver version, so even when you walk away, your space stays cohesive.
Clocks started as something I just wanted for myself. I designed the backgrounds and clock styles that I would actually want to use. When I looked around at other options, most clock apps felt either too busy, too simple, or not thoughtfully designed. I wanted something minimal, modern, and tasteful.
Along the way, it’s been interesting to see how different people respond to the designs. Some backgrounds I almost cut ended up being favorites, and some that I loved didn’t get much traction. Taste is subjective, and part of the fun has been seeing how people make the app their own.
Another focus was making sure the app could work even on older iPhones that don’t support official standby mode. With Clocks, you can set a shortcut to launch the app automatically when you plug in your device, creating a similar experience even on older hardware.
In the end, Clocks is a mix of utility, design, and creative exploration. It’s a product, but it’s also a learning project ‒ a way to stretch what’s possible with SwiftUI, Metal, and a very intentional design process. It’s built to fit beautifully into your space, whether that’s your home office, bedroom, or studio.
Tool Stack of Clocks
What’s under Clocks’ hood? Which technologies were used and why did you chose them?
Clocks is built completely in SwiftUI, through and through. There’s no third-party libraries or frameworks under the hood ‒ just what Apple provides out of the box. I thought about branching out at a few points, especially when working with fonts, since font spacing and negative tracking can be really tricky in Swift. But in the end, I stuck with native SwiftUI for everything.
The app also uses Metal for the backgrounds. Every screen has a Metal shader running, which plays a huge part in giving the app its visual richness and dynamic feel. Prototyping the shaders directly inside Xcode or Figma wasn’t really practical, so I used Vercel’s v0 as a kind of digital scrapbook. That let me quickly test and iterate on different shader versions before bringing them into the app.
I’ve always been a believer in iteration. I still start my projects in Figma ‒ a step I think a lot of makers today skip because they’re eager to prototype, but iterating on a canvas is still so important. It lets me figure out what works and what doesn’t before I ever write code. From there, I move into Cursor, which is my main IDE. Cursor feels a lot more like a web development environment, which is what I’m more used to. Even though I use Xcode, it’s mostly just for running the app, testing, and configuring builds. I still find Xcode pretty overwhelming with how much is packed into it, so I try to keep my actual coding inside Cursor whenever possible.
In Cursor, I lean heavily on agent mode. It writes the code for me, and I review and refine it. It takes a lot of handholding, especially with Metal shaders and SwiftUI, but it’s been an incredible help. I honestly couldn’t have built and learned everything as quickly without it. I mostly stick with GPT-3.5 Sonnet inside Cursor because 3.7 hasn’t been reliable for me, especially with complex projects like this.
The whole stack is intentionally simple ‒ native tools, no external libraries, and a lot of iterative work moving between design, prototyping, and code.
Do you use any other tools to run the business?
For the marketing side of Clocks, I used Waitlist List to set up the waitlist. I looked at a lot of different waitlist tools, but most of them were kind of ridiculous when it came to pricing, like charging $30 or $50 a month for just a few hundred signups. I didn’t want to lock myself into something expensive before even launching. In the end, around 8,000 people signed up for the waitlist, which was pretty crazy.
Aside from that, most of the communication and marketing has been pretty simple. I’ve mostly posted updates on Twitter and LinkedIn to build a bit of momentum before launch. I didn’t want to just drop the app out of nowhere, I’d rather have people excited and ready to use it. So far, most of my users are coming from Twitter, and being able to connect with people there has already been awesome.
What’s your personal stack? Which apps do you and your team love?
For design, I mostly just use Figma ‒ it’s my main design tool for everything. I work there, but it’s also the tool I would choose anyway. For coding, I use Cursor as my IDE. I like it because it feels closer to a web development environment, which is what I’m more familiar with. I also use Warp as my terminal app, which fits well into the flow of bouncing between Figma, Cursor, v0, and Xcode.
For planning and notes, I use Notion, but honestly, I don’t love it. I think any decent notes app could replace it if needed. When I’m away from my computer, I’ll use Claude, especially for asking questions about development or next steps while I’m thinking through problems on the go.
Otherwise, I’m pretty basic. I use Chrome as my browser and Gmail for email. I’ve tried to love Arc, but it never really stuck for me. I still use Google Calendar for meetings. It’s all pretty standard, maybe just leftover habits from working in tech companies. I also still spend a lot of time on Discord, chatting with friends and sending them updates or ideas.
When I’m working, I usually have Spotify running in the background. Nothing fancy, just a few tools I really know and trust.
Anything else you’d like to share?
Clocks is now live. You can find updates and news on Twitter at @theclocksapp or visit clocks.app to check it out. If you have any ideas for features or feedback, feel free to DM me ‒ I’d love to hear what you think.
Now, discover Clocks for yourself
Huge thanks to Daniel for sharing the story behind The Clocks App and the details on the building blocks that make it such a beautiful app. Now download it yourself and upgrade your workstation.