Last Updated on 2024-08-14 by Clay
Introduction
I often use my computer to watch full-screen videos and need to promptly return to work mode when the time comes — but embarrassingly, I don’t like constantly picking up my phone to check the current time, as it’s quite inconvenient.
I once used the watch -n 1 date command on another screen to continuously display the current time, allowing me to glance over at it whenever needed; however, this display method was not very aesthetic, and the font was quite small.
Eventually, I found a small terminal tool for displaying the clock: tty-clock. This is, so far, the most satisfying solution I’ve used.
Installation
sudo apt install tty-clock
Simply using the tty-clock command can display the time in the terminal. There are also several standard operations, such as adding the -s parameter to display seconds, centering the clock by pressing C after entering, and changing the color using the number keys [0-7]… etc.
How to Use
Commands
tty-clock accepts a number of runtime keyboard commands, upper and lower case characters
are treated identically.
K,J,H,L
vi-style movement commands to set the position of the displayed clock. These
commands have no effect when the centered option is set.
[0-7] Select a different color for displaying the clock.
B Toggles bewteen bold and normal colors.
X Toggles displaying a box around the clock. This option is disabled by default.
C Toggle the clock's position to centered. When set the movement commands are
disabled.
R Set the clock to rebound along the edges of the terminal.
S Display seconds.
T Switch time output to the 12-hour format.
Q Quit.
Options
-s Show seconds.
-S Screensaver mode. tty-clock terminates when any key is pressed.
-x Show box.
-c Set the clock at the center of the terminal.
-C [0-7]
Set the clock color.
-b Use bold colors.
-t Set the hour in 12h format.
-u Use UTC time.
-T tty Display the clock on the given tty. tty must be a valid character device to which
the user has rw access permissions. (See EXAMPLES)
-r Do rebound the clock.
-f format
Set the date format as described in strftime(3).
-n Do not quit the program when the Q key is pressed (or when any key is pressed while
in Screensaver mode). A signal must be sent to tty-clock in order to terminate its
execution. (See EXAMPLES)
-v Show tty-clock version.
-i Show some info about tty-clock.
-h Show usage information.
-D Hide the date.
-B Enable blinking colon.
-d delay
Set the delay (in seconds) between two redraws of the clock. Default 1s.
-a nsdelay
Additional delay (in nanoseconds) between two redraws of the clock. Default 0ns.