Built in Apps

Built-in Apps

The companion ships its own library of ready-to-run apps. They speak the splitflap-os plugin format, so apps written for that project drop in and run too. One tap on a tile runs an app; the App Library adds or removes them; and you can write your own.

⚠️ This page is a tour, not an inventory. The app ecosystem is always changing — apps are added, gain settings, and improve all the time, and this list is a snapshot. Always check the App Library inside the companion (Apps tab → App Library) for what your install actually offers: it is the source of truth, and it's where new apps appear first.

Badges: 🌐 adapts to the global Language (translated text, local date & number formats) · ⚡ has a trigger mode — it can watch for a condition and briefly interrupt the display when it fires · 🎞 animation (colour frames) · 🎨 canvas app — draws graphics straight onto a Matrix Gateway's LED panel; needs a Matrix wall and won't appear on a physical flap display · 🔑 needs an API key. Min grid is the smallest wall the app accepts, rows × columns.

There's no badge for Matrix-panel support because it isn't the exception any more: every functional app below is dual-surface — it runs on the flaps and draws a rich Matrix-panel view, toggleable per app — see Every app has a Matrix-panel view.

Clocks, dates & calendars

App	What it shows	Min grid
Time 🌐	A live clock. Optional seconds on a Matrix Gateway.	1×8
Binary Clock	The time as a classic BCD binary clock — colour flaps as bits, colours for 1 and 0 yours to pick. Seconds on a Matrix Gateway.	4×8
Date 🌐	The full date, laid out for your wall.	2×10
World Clock 🌐⚡	Time zones side by side. On a Matrix panel: one lit day/night row per city.	1×10
Word Clock 🌐	The time as a written phrase — "QUARTER PAST NINE".	3×12
Art Clock 🎞	The time drawn in colour art.	3×15
Dashboard 🌐	Time + weather on one screen. On a tall wall (5+ rows) it drops both onto one dense page that spreads to the edges, instead of two sparse pages.	3×12
Calendar 🌐	Your next events from iCal feeds (Google, Apple, …), recurring events included.	2×12
Countdown 🌐⚡	A timer to a moment you pick (up to five at once). On walls five rows or taller, each unit gets its own row with a colour bar of how much of its cycle remains. On a Matrix panel: full-width draining colour bars. Optional seconds on a Matrix Gateway.	1×6
Time Since 🌐⚡	Elapsed time since a moment — days without incident, days since launch. Live seconds on a Matrix Gateway.	3×10
Public Holidays 🌐	Upcoming holidays for your country and province/state — ten years bundled, works offline. Four layers, each switchable: public holidays, religious observances by tradition, curated cultural traditions per language-region, and a fun-day-every-day novelty calendar. On a Matrix panel: a desk-calendar card per holiday.	2×12

Weather & nature

App	What it shows	Min grid
Weather 🌐⚡	Current conditions, a multi-day forecast with per-day sky words and colour flaps, and AQI / UV / pollen. Keyless out of the box (Open-Meteo); WeatherAPI, QWeather or OpenWeather with a key.	1×8
Forecast Ribbon 🎞	The day's temperature curve as a colour bar chart.	3×8
Sun Times 🌐	Sunrise, sunset & day length.	1×12
Moon Phase 🌐⚡	The current moon phase, with an illumination bar in colour flaps.	3×10
Aurora Watch 🌐	Geomagnetic activity (Kp index) with a severity colour — will you see the aurora tonight?	1×12
Tides 🌐	Today's high & low tides (NOAA).	1×12
Earthquakes 🌐	Recent significant earthquakes (USGS), colour-coded by magnitude.	1×12
BirdNET ⚡	Live bird detections from a BirdNET-Pi on your network.	1×10

Sky & space

App	What it shows	Min grid
ISS Tracker 🌐⚡	Where the Space Station is — and an interruption when it passes overhead.	1×14
Rocket Launch 🌐	The next orbital rocket launch.	1×12
Planes Overhead ⚡	Nearby aircraft. Keyless via OpenSky; FlightAware / Flightradar24 / AirLabs / aviationstack with a key.	3×12

Markets & money

App	What it shows	Min grid
Stocks 🌐⚡	Live prices for the tickers you follow.	1×13
Crypto 🌐⚡	Coin prices, shown by ticker (BTC, ETH, …).	1×13
Exchange Rates 🌐	Live currency rates (ECB).	1×12
Precious Metals 🌐	Gold & silver spot prices.	1×13
BTC Fear & Greed 🌐⚡	The Bitcoin Fear & Greed index, with a sentiment colour.	1×14

Sports & transit

App	What it shows	Min grid
Sports 🌐⚡	Scores & schedules for the teams you follow.	1×8
Formula 1 🌐	The next Grand Prix & championship leader.	2×12
Metro 🌐⚡	MBTA arrivals for your stop.	1×10

News & learning

App	What it shows	Min grid
News Headlines ⚡	Latest news from RSS feeds you choose.	3×10
Wikipedia Today 🌐	Wikipedia's featured article & most-read pages.	2×15
On This Day	Historical events that happened today — up to three per day.	3×10
Word of the Day 🌐	A new word every day.	2×15
Trivia	Random trivia questions.	3×10

Quotes, facts & fun

App	What it shows	Min grid
Quote	An inspirational quote.	3×15
Motivational Quotes 🌐	Daily motivation.	3×15
Stoic Quotes 🌐	Ancient wisdom.	3×15
Advice	A random piece of advice.	2×15
Star Wars	May the force be with you.	3×15
Harry Potter	Wizarding wisdom.	3×15
The Office	That's what she said.	3×15
Movie Quotes	Iconic film lines, each with the movie it's from.	3×15
Chuck Norris	Chuck Norris facts.	3×15
Dad Jokes 🌐	A question, then the punchline — a two-screen quiz reveal.	3×15
One Liners	Quick witty laughs.	3×15
Shower Thoughts 🌐	Mind-bending thoughts.	3×15
Magic 8 Ball 🌐	Ask, and the wall answers.	3×15
Fortune Cookie 🌐	A fortune without the cookie.	3×15
Sarcastic Fortune Cookies 🌐	Cynical fortune-cookie wisdom.	3×15
Cat Facts	A concise cat fact.	3×15
Dog Facts	A concise dog fact.	3×15
Random Fact 🌐	A concise random fact — in English or German, following your Language.	3×15
Good Morning 🌐	A morning pick-me-up.	3×15
Good Night 🌐	An evening wind-down.	3×15

YouTube & streaming

All three read the shared YouTube API key global setting. 🔑

App	What it shows	Min grid
YouTube 🌐⚡🔑	Channel stats — real subscribers with an API key, latest uploads without.	3×10
Comments ⚡🔑	Latest comments on your videos.	2×10
Livestream 🔑	Launch-day rotation for a stream.	3×12

Animations

Pure colour-flap animations for the whole wall — see Writing Apps for how they work. Each keeps its own speed and reveal order.

App	Effect
Checker 🎞	A checkerboard.
Matrix 🎞	A cascade reveal.
Rainbow 🎞	A colour wave.
Random Spin 🎞	Continuous random flaps.
Sweep 🎞	A colour sweep.
Twinkle 🎞	A sparkle effect.

(Art Clock and Forecast Ribbon above are animations too — themed ones.)

Every app has a Matrix-panel view

Every functional app in the library is dual-surface: the same app, off one shared configuration, spells its text on a physical flap wall and draws a rich panel view on a Matrix Gateway — real graphics on black, laid out adaptively from a big 256×64 panel down to 64×32. On a Matrix-panel display, each app's settings open with a Show on Matrix panel toggle at the top — on by default; flip it off to keep that app on flap-style text. (The toggle only appears on Matrix-panel displays — a flap wall always gets the flap view.)

A sampler on a 128×64 panel:

Word Clock	Moon Phase
Sun Times	Tides
ISS Tracker	Metro
Sports	Stocks
Aurora Watch	News Headlines

The text-channel and quiz apps (jokes, quotes, fortunes …) render on the panel too, generically — large text beside a themed icon; see Channels and quizzes on the panel.

Matrix-panel canvas apps 🎨

A Matrix Gateway can be driven as a raw LED canvas — arbitrary graphics, free of the flap grid — so these apps draw on the panel instead of returning flap pages. They need a Matrix wall and won't appear on a physical flap display. See Writing Apps → Canvas apps to build your own.

Some of them on a 128×64 panel, with New York's weather and time:

Lumina Clock	Weather Sky
Overview	World Clock (panel view)
Date Card	Countdown (panel view)
Public Holidays (panel view)	Stock Graph
Image

World Clock, Countdown and Public Holidays aren't canvas-only — like every functional app they're dual-surface, and these are simply their panel views (see Every app has a Matrix-panel view).

App	What it shows
Effects 🎨🎞	On-device panel effects — plasma, fire, matrix rain, flip-o-rama, clock and Conway's Life — rendered by the panel itself at its native frame rate, with nothing on the network. Optional hue and density knobs where the effect supports them; the picker shows exactly what the wall advertises.
Animation 🎨🎞	Plays a looping animation (e.g. a GIF), uploaded to the panel once and then run on-device from PSRAM — the companion can disconnect and it keeps looping.
Ticker 🎨	A line of text scrolling across the panel, rendered on-device — a message you type, or a live news / RSS feed.
Lumina Clock 🎨	The time as luminous colour — big anti-aliased digits filling the panel, in four treatments: Glow (a light-to-colour gradient with a soft halo), Aurora (colour flowing through the numerals), Neon (a bright tube-glow) and Minimal. Curated palettes (Amber / Ice / Mint / Duotone / Daylight, never pink), 12h/24h, a smooth seconds bar. The canvas evolution of the flap Art Clock.
Image 🎨	Mirrors a picture onto the panel as a full-colour frame — fit or fill. Leave the URL blank for a colour demo.
Overview 🎨	A drawn dashboard that fills a big Matrix panel — a large clock and the date on the left, a weather column on the right (temperature, condition, high/low, feels-like, humidity, wind) with a day/night sun or moon, and a seconds sweep. Degrades gracefully to a clock + a line of weather on a small panel.
Weather Sky 🎨	The weather as a colourful scene — a sky whose colour is the hour and the conditions (deep-blue nights with a glowing moon and coloured stars, warm dawn and dusk, greying over for cloud and rain), a glowing sun or moon, drifting cloud, falling rain or snow — with the temperature, the condition, and today's high/low. On a big panel it opens up into a full info panel — feels-like, humidity, wind and a three-day forecast strip. Shares the same live source and location as the ordinary Weather app.
Date Card 🎨	A big typographic date — the day numeral, weekday, month and year, with a year-progress bar and a whisper of the weekday's colour. On a big panel it adds a facts column: the ISO week, the day of the year, and how many days of the year remain.
Stock Graph 🎨	A live quote — an index or ticker — in big bold type over its own price chart, green when up and red when down, with the day's percentage and a faint previous-close baseline. One symbol, or a rotating watchlist (a market board). Range 1D…1Y. Prices from the same source as the flap Stocks.
Weather Panel 🎨	Current conditions on a black panel — a condition icon, a colour-graded temperature, feels-like / humidity / wind, and a tall three-day forecast strip with big icons. Shares the live source and location of Weather.
Scoreboard 🎨	Live and upcoming games with team logos and scores, cycling one matchup at a time. Uses the same team / league picker as the flap Sports.
HA Dashboard 🎨	Your Home Assistant entity states as a grid of coloured cards on the panel — icon, value and a threshold colour. The panel counterpart of the flap Home Assistant app.
Aquarium 🎨	An animated reef — fish drift and dart across the panel. Purely decorative.

Channels and quizzes on the panel

A channel or quiz app (jokes, quotes, fortunes …) normally shows as text on the flaps, but on a Matrix panel it can render as large text beside a themed icon instead. On a Matrix-panel display each such app's settings open with a Show on Matrix panel (art + text) toggle at the top — on by default; the toggle doesn't appear on a flap wall — and the app names its icon with the manifest's canvas_art field (a clapperboard for Movie Quotes, a moon for Good Night, the 🥠 for the fortune cookies, and so on). A quiz shows its two screens in turn: the question, then — after the page delay — the answer.

Movie Quotes	Dad Jokes (quiz)
Fortune Cookie

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Missing something? Upload your own app as a .zip from the App Library — the guide is Writing Apps.