bnClock Help

Help: Appearance Settings

You can adjust the appearance of bnClock. The Appearance Settings screen is show below. Exit and save changes at any time by swiping right or left, or tapping the Done button.

Appearance settings: how to exit

bnClock Appearance settings

Clock display

bnClock has five ways to display the clock: two 7-segment options, Nixie, 5x7 dot matrix, and text.

Appearance settings choosing clock type

Clock style selection

Choosing a clock color

You can choose the color your clock face. The colors were selected to mimic some traditional clock radio colors. Simply tap on the color of your choice. Scroll horizontally to see all of the choices.

Appearance settings choosing clock color

Choosing a clock face color

To create a custom clock face color, scroll the colors to the left until the color wheel is visible. Tap the color wheel.

To create custom clock face colors

Creating a custom clock face color

From the Clock Face Colors view, you can add, modify, or delete clock face colors. The order of the colors can also be rearranged.

Using iCloud he color face colors are shared between all of your devices running bnClock 4.3 or later. A change on one device will replace the colors on all other devices. Note: sometimes it may take a bit of time before all devices are synchronized.

Editing clock face colors

Editing clock face colors

Choosing a background color

You might like to have a background color other than black. Tap one of the pre-defined background colors or tap the color wheel to create a new background color.

Choosing a background color

Choosing a background color

A photograph can also be used as a clock background. To select a photograph, scroll the background colors left until the small photo appears. Tap the photo.

Choosing a background photograph

Choosing a background photograph

An album of photographs can be used to create a slide show as a background to your clock. Use the stepper to select the amount of time each photo appears as a background.

Choosing a background slide show

Choosing a background slide show

Finally, photos can be custom sized, or cropped to better fit your device's screen. Use the Use crop switch and Set Crop to do this. Use a pinch gesture to zoom the photograph and a drag gesture to reposition photograph. Note: On an iPhone, the radio button at the bottom is used to switch between the portrait and landscape crops.

Cropping a photograph

Cropping a photograph

Allow stacked digits

To get even larger digits on an, you can enable Allow stacked digits. This will vertically stack the hours, minutes, and, if enabled, seconds, when your device is portrait orientation, and the horizontal space for the clock is limited.

             Appearance settings allow stacked digits        iPhone with stacked digits

Allow stacked digits

Clock brightness

The clock display may be too bright at night for you. bnClock provides some options for controlling the display brightness.

Always use the system defined brightness. Depending upon how you have configured your device, your display may automatically dim when the ambient light decreases.

Appearance settings clock brightness

Brightness setting

Turn off Always use system brightness to use the bnClock brightness whenever bnClock is displayed.

Turn on Use brightness 30 minutes before sunset to 30 minutes after sunrise to use the bnClock brightness from just before sunset to just after sunrise. Otherwise the system brightness will be used.

Dimmer weather ICONs will make the weather ICONs less bright when in dimmed mode.

Appearance settings, more clock brightness

Brightness setting

If you have turned off Always use the system defined brightness, you can also adjust the brightness when viewing the clock by dragging up and down on the clock. If you have enabled Use brightness 30 minutes... display brightness will return to the system defined brightness after a few seconds if the time is not between sunset and sunrise.

bnClock will restore your device's brightness to the system setting when you switch to another app.

Show weather

bnClock will display a weather forecast for your current, or a selected, location. This display can be disabled if desired. Use the Weather Settings to set a location for the weather forecast.

Appearance settings show or hide weather

Enabling or disabling the weather display

Show date

When enabled, the day of the week, date, month and year are displayed below the clock.

Show seconds

Normally bnClock displays seconds with the time. Some clocks do not have a seconds display and this setting causes bnClock to remove the seconds from the display. This has a side effect of making the digits larger.

When seconds are hidden, the default is to blink the colon between the hours and minutes. There are other options available:

No indicator
The clock shows no indication that seconds are changing
Blink colon
The default, which blinks the colon every second
Line indicator
Show a line below the hours and minutes that indicates seconds passing. Line indicator for seconds

Line indicator for seconds

Circle indicator
Display a small circle which indicates how many seconds have passed in the minute. Circle indicator for seconds

Circle indicator for seconds

Snooze touch has priority

By default, bnClock accepts a tap gesture to indicate a snooze request. And by default, a swipe or pan gesture is used to request reseting the alarm for tomorrow. For some, this may be to fine a distinction when trying to wake up.

By enabling Snooze touch has priority any touch on the screen will request a snooze. To reset the alarm for tomorrow, tap and hold for 2.5 seconds or longer.

Appearance settings for snooze touch has priority

Enable/disable Snooze touch has priority

Not plugged in warning

You can turn off the warning that occurs when you start using bnClock and your device is not plugged in. However, this is not recommended because bnClock prevents your device from turning itself off while it is running. If you device is not plugged it, your battery could completely run down while you are sleeping.

Appearance settings show not plugged in warning

Turning off the not plugged in warning

Swipe right or left works on devices running iOS 12 or earlier. On devices running iOS 13 or later, a swipe down will save and exit Appearance Settings.