Dali Clock

Dali Clock is a digital clock. When a digit changes, it "melts" into its new shape. The date is displayed when the mouse is pressed. The window can be made transparent, and foreground and background colors change smoothly.

It is available for X11, MacOS X, iPhone, iPad, Android, Palm WebOS, PalmOS Classic, Monochron and Pebble. There is no Windows version, so don't ask.

MacOS X	DaliClock-243.dmg (2.1 MB) There are three variants included here: a normal application; a screen saver; and a Dashboard widget. It is also available in the App Store (app only). MacOS 10.7 Intel or newer is required. If you are still using 10.5 or 10.6, it's possible that version 2.43 will still work for you. If you are still using 10.4 and/or PPC, it's possible that version 2.35 will still work for you.
iPhone, iPad	The iPhone and iPad version of Dali Clock is available in the App Store.
Android	DaliClock-243.apk (650 KB) -- or in the Google Play store. The Android Dali Clock runs as both a normal application and as a "Daydream" service. Select Settings / Display / Daydream / Dali Clock, and it will run automatically as a kind of screen saver when the device is docked or charging. Android 4.2 or newer is required.
Palm WebOS	DaliClock-229.ipk (38 KB) You can also install it via the Preware third-party app installer.
PalmOS Classic	DaliClock-232.prc (35 KB) Transfer this to your Palm Pilot, Treo or Centro, and go. (Phones used to be easy!)
Monochron	Dali Clock firmware is included with Adafruit's Monochron Clock Kit.
Pebble	A port to the Pebble Smart Watch is available in the Pebble App Store.
Unix, Linux, etc	Your vendor probably provides a binary distribution for your platform. If not, compile it from the source code below.
Javascript	Oh yeah, there's also a Javascript version that runs directly in your web browser. That's what's running at the top of this page.

All Platforms

xdaliclock-2.43.tar.gz (2.2 MB) This contains the source code for all versions of Dali Clock.

This is a very old program! The original version was written in 1979 by Steve Capps for the Xerox Alto workstation. In 1984, he ported it to the original Macintosh 128K. (He says that his inspiration was the morphing effect seen in the 1974 short film La Faim by Peter Foldes, one of the first computer-generated key-frame animations.)

In 1991, I (Jamie Zawinski) re-implemented Dali Clock from scratch for X Windows on Unix. It's been fairly popular there ever since.

In 1999, I ported the X11 version to PalmOS. The entertaining thing about this is that the Palm Pilot that I had at the time was an only slightly more powerful machine than the Mac 128K: they had almost the same CPU, and almost the same sized screen! The Palm was about 4x faster, though, and had 16x as much memory. And it weighed a whole lot less.

In 2005, I ported the X11 version to MacOS X, bringing this story full circle.

And more recently, in 2009 I ported it to Palm WebOS; in 2010 I ported it to iOS; and in 2015 Robin Müller-Cajar and I ported it to Android.

(Not pictured: Palm Pre running WebOS 1.0.3; iPhone 3.0; iPad 3.2; Monochron kit; Kindle; Pebble Watch; Android.)