Modern Clock v1.2

Modern Clock v1.2

Modern Clock v1.2 introduces expanded widget appearance and colour customization, along with improved widget refresh handling.

🌗 Widget Appearance

Widgets can now use three appearance modes:

• Follow system — follows the device's current light/dark mode.
• Light — always uses the light appearance.
• Dark — always uses the dark appearance.

When Follow system is selected, Modern Clock listens for system appearance changes and refreshes the widget automatically.

On some launchers, including certain Huawei launcher versions, the launcher itself may delay visually redrawing an AppWidget after a system appearance change. Modern Clock updates the widget immediately, but the launcher may not display the change until its next refresh.

🎨 Independent Light & Dark Colours

Light and dark widget colours can now be configured independently.

For each appearance, you can customize:

• DAY colour
• DATE colour
• TIME colour
• DAY shadow colour
• DATE shadow colour
• TIME shadow colour

Existing widget colours are preserved as the initial Light appearance values.

🌓 Light & Dark Colour Tabs

The colour settings now use dedicated Light and Dark tabs, making it easier to configure each appearance separately.

The built-in colour picker continues to provide:

• HEX colour input
• RGB values
• HSL values
• Quick colour presets
• Live colour preview

🔄 Improved Widget Updates

Widget refreshing has been improved for configuration changes and application updates.

Modern Clock now refreshes existing widgets when the application is opened normally, helping widgets immediately use the current configuration after an app update.

Widget updates also occur when changing:

• Widget appearance
• Widget colours
• Shadow settings
• Font sizes
• Date and time formats
• Day visibility
• Day letter spacing

🔋 Battery Usage Settings

The application now provides direct access to the system battery-optimization settings, making it easier to configure Modern Clock's battery usage for reliable widget operation.

🧹 Additional Improvements

• Improved handling of system appearance changes.
• Improved widget configuration persistence.
• Improved settings UI consistency.
• Improved widget update reliability across supported devices and widget sizes.

Modern Clock v1.1

Modern Clock v1.1

Modern Clock v1.1 is a major settings and rendering update focused on better customization, responsive typography, device compatibility, and a more robust settings experience.

✨ What's New

🎨 Independent Typography Controls

• Independent font-size controls for DAY, DATE, and TIME.
• Font size can be adjusted from 50% to 200%.
• The renderer automatically fits text to the available widget space.
• When the requested size cannot fit, the affected font size is automatically reduced to the largest size that fits.
• Explicit letter-spacing settings are preserved during fitting.

🌑 Per-Element Shadows

Each element now has independent shadow controls:

• DAY shadow — On/Off
• DATE shadow — On/Off
• TIME shadow — On/Off
• Independent shadow colour for each element.

The default shadow appearance remains close to the original Modern Clock design.

🌍 English Widget Day/Date

The widget's DAY and DATE are now always displayed in English, regardless of the device's system language.

The application interface itself continues to follow the device language.

📱 Improved Settings Screen

• Improved scrolling behaviour.
• Better handling of the on-screen keyboard.
• Fields automatically remain visible while editing.
• Improved handling of system bars and display insets.
• Better compatibility with different Android devices and screen configurations.

👁️ Improved Widget Rendering

The widget renderer was improved to provide more predictable typography sizing across different widget dimensions and configurations.

The original visual design and typography have been preserved while making font sizing responsive.

🖼️ Wallpaper Preview

The settings preview can use the device wallpaper as its background when Android grants the required All files access permission.

If access is unavailable, the preview uses a neutral light-grey background.

Note: Android treats this as the broad MANAGE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE special access permission rather than a wallpaper-specific permission.

🔧 Technical

• Native Android AppWidget.
• Minimum Android version: API 31 (Android 12).
• Kotlin / Kotlin DSL.
• Custom bitmap-based widget renderer retained for reliable custom-font rendering across Android widget hosts.
• Poppins bundled under the SIL Open Font License.
• GPL-3.0 licensed project.

🐛 Known Issues

The following issues are known and planned for v1.2:

• On some launchers, including Pixel Launcher and Huawei's launcher, widgets may receive significant host-imposed padding, reducing the usable area.
• Existing widget instances may occasionally become invisible after installing an updated APK. Removing and re-adding the widget restores it.

These issues are being deferred to v1.2 rather than introducing potentially disruptive changes into the v1.1 release.

📦 Installation

Download the APK below and install it on an Android 12+ device.

When upgrading from an earlier development build, an existing widget may need to be removed and added again due to the known widget-update issue.

🔗 Links

Source code: Modern Clock on GitHub

License: GPL-3.0

Modern Clock v1.0

Modern Clock v1.0

The first stable release of Modern Clock for Android.

A minimalist, customizable home-screen clock widget inspired by KDE Modern Clock.

Highlights

• Minimalist home-screen clock widget
• KDE-inspired visual design
• Anurati day display and Poppins date/time
• Custom date and time formats
• Independent day, date, and time colors
• Adjustable day letter spacing
• Show/hide day
• True-black OLED mode
• Light, dark, and system appearance settings
• Resizable widget
• Automatic clock updates
• Subtle text shadows
• No Google Play Services required

Tested devices

• Samsung Galaxy S9+ — Android 14 / One UI 6
• Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra
• Huawei MatePad 11 — HarmonyOS 3

Installation

Download Modern-Clock-v1.0.apk below and install it on your Android device.

After installation, open Modern Clock once and add the widget from your home-screen widget picker.

Requirements

• Android 12 (API 31) or newer
• Android-compatible launcher with support for third-party widgets

Attribution

Inspired by KDE Modern Clock by Prayag2:

https://github.com/Prayag2/kde_modernclock

Licensed under GPL-3.0.

Created by Dark Witcher.