BinClockWidget

AMOLED-black monochrome binary-clock home-screen widget
AppID:fr.shiningcat.binclockwidget
Author:shining-cat
License:GPL-3.0-or-later
Donation:
InRepoSince:2026-08-04
LastRepoUpdate:2026-08-10
LastAppUpdate:Unknown
LastVersion:1.0.0
Categories:Clock
APK source:
icon An AMOLED-black, monochrome binary-clock Android home-screen widget.

It renders the current time and date as a 6×4 grid of dots. Cells that would otherwise go unused carry a couple of small extras: the device alarm state and a weather glyph. The aesthetic is deliberately austere — solid dots on true black, no chrome, no colour — so it disappears into an AMOLED wallpaper and sips battery.

How to read it

The face is a grid of rows (values) and columns (place values):

* Rows encode, top to bottom: hours, minutes, day (of month), month.
* Columns are binary place values: 32 · 16 · 8 · 4 · 2 · 1.
* A lit (solid) dot means that place value is on; an unlit dot is off. Add the lit columns in a row to read that row's number.

For example, a minutes row with the 32, 8, and 2 dots lit reads 32 + 8 + 2 = 42.

The cells not needed by the low-value ends of the shorter rows are reused to show the alarm state and a weather condition glyph.

Weather, network & privacy

Weather is off by default and opt-in: on a fresh install the widget makes no network or location calls, and no weather glyph is shown. Weather stays entirely dormant until you enter a weather server URL in the widget settings.

When you turn it on, weather uses the keyless Open-Meteo API. Tapping "Use Open-Meteo" fills in the public endpoint (https://api.open-meteo.com/), which is then contacted over the INTERNET permission to fetch current conditions and a short forecast. You can instead point the setting at your own self-hosted Open-Meteo instance — any http(s) URL is accepted.

With weather on, the widget also needs coarse location (ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION) to fetch conditions for where you are. Location is read via the platform LocationManager only — there are no Google Play Services, no fused/Play location, and no proprietary SDKs. The coordinates are sent only to the weather server you configured, and only while weather is enabled.

WhatsNew:

Version 1.0.0

- Fix stale day/night weather glyph: the sun/moon icon now reflects the actual time of day, derived at render time from the cached sunrise/sunset times, so it stays correct even after the device has been asleep
- First stable release

Download Source Issues ChangeLog
01_widget_amoled.png 02_widget_weather_off.png 03_settings_appearance.png 04_settings_weather_on.png 05_settings_weather_off.png
While you can download the APKs here directly, you should preferably use an F-Droid client so the app stays up-to-date on your device.

Packages

Version 1.0.0 (2026-08-10) no RB details available help icon

Android Versions:
  • Target: 17.0
  • MinVer: 8.0
  • ABIs: arm64-v8a, armeabi-v7a, x86, x86_64

Download (14.1 M)

Version 0.1.3 (2026-08-04) no RB details available help icon