ChronoDesk Star Download

FOR WINDOWS 10 AND 11 · FREE AND OPEN SOURCE

A hardware clock that floats on your Windows desktop.

Clock, stopwatch, countdown timer and a world market board, drawn as dot-matrix or seven-segment LEDs or in plain type. Transparent, always on top, out of your way.

Download for Windows

ChronoDesk-Setup.exe · ~5.8 MB · no admin rights

Portable exe, checksums and release notes

Not code-signed: Windows SmartScreen may ask once. How to run it

ChronoDesk clock in the Studio colours: green dot-matrix 10:09:37 and TUE 22 SEP, framed by the seconds ring of sixty LEDs that light up red second by second

Four modes, one small window

Switch from the right-click menu, or with Ctrl+Alt+Shift+1–4 from any window.

  • Clock in warm white type on its dark backdrop: 10:09:37 and TUE 22 SEP

    Typeface · Warm · backdrop

    Clock

    Time and date, 24 or 12 hours, seconds on or off. Add a second time zone after the date.

  • Stopwatch in amber seven-segment digits with ghosted unlit segments, paused at 12:34.3

    Seven-segment · Amber

    Stopwatch

    Start, pause and reset with a hotkey. A running stopwatch carries on after a restart or a reboot.

  • Pomodoro timer in red dot-matrix, framed by the LED seconds ring: 17:12 left and FOCUS 1/4 · PAUSED

    Dot matrix · Red · seconds ring

    Timer

    Count down from 1 to 1440 minutes; scroll over a stopped timer to change it. Turn on Pomodoro for four focus periods with short and long breaks.

  • Market board in cool blue type: New York, London and Frankfurt trading, Hong Kong and Tokyo closed, and LONDON CLOSES IN 1H 45M

    Typeface · Cool · city names

    Markets

    Which stock exchanges are trading, on lunch break or closed, with a countdown such as “London closes in 1h 45m”. Worked out on your PC: no network, no account.

Or as a single line, with city names or exchange codes.

The market board as a one-line strip in green seven-segment digits with exchange codes: NYSE, LSE and XETRA trading, HKEX and TSE closed, and LSE CLOSES IN 1H 45M

Nine exchanges from New York to Sydney, with daylight saving time handled per region. Public holidays and half days are not included.

Pick a face and a colour

3 faces × 8 colours, with or without the seconds ring and the backdrop, in any combination. Every picture here is rendered by ChronoDesk itself, off screen, at a pinned time.

ChronoDesk clock, seven-segment digits, Red: 10:09:37 and TUE 22 SEP, framed by the sixty-LED seconds ring
All of these, and size, 12/24 hours, the date and night dimming, are in the right-click menu. Without the ring, Studio looks like Green: its red is in the ring and in the stopwatch and timer digits.
Face
Colour
Show

More looks

  • Clock in amber dot-matrix in 12-hour format: 10:09:37 and AM · TUE 22 SEP

    12-hour clock, with AM or PM before the date.

  • Clock in yellow type, dimmed for the night: 10:09:37 and TUE 22 SEP

    Night dimming at the default 70 %, always or on a schedule.

  • Clock in white seven-segment digits on pure #00FF00 green: 10:09:37 and TUE 22 SEP

    Chroma key: pure #00FF00 behind it, for OBS to key out.

  • Clock at the small size in red type: 10:09:37 and TUE 22 SEP

    Small, for a corner of the screen; Medium and Large too.

Made to sit on your desktop all day

  • OUT OF THE WAY

    Lock it from the tray icon and clicks pass straight through to the windows below. A dark halo keeps white digits readable on a white page, and night mode dims it on a schedule, never below 60 %.

  • HOTKEYS FROM ANY WINDOW

    Global hotkeys, also while locked
    KeysAction
    Ctrl+Alt+Shift+SpaceStart or pause the stopwatch or timer
    Ctrl+Alt+Shift+RReset
    Ctrl+Alt+Shift+1 2 3 4Clock, stopwatch, timer, markets
    Ctrl+Alt+Shift+LLock or unlock (click-through)

    A key combination another program already uses is skipped, not fought over. Switch them off under Global hotkeys.

  • READY FOR STREAMING

    Chroma-key mode puts it on pure #00FF00 for OBS and other streaming software. Green colours are drawn in white there, so the keyer keeps them.

  • SURVIVES A REBOOT

    A running stopwatch or timer picks up where it was after a restart. A one-shot alarm sounds three times and blinks the frame, and won't ring late after the PC has been asleep.

  • LIGHT

    One ~5.8 MB exe with no image or font files. About 50 MB of RAM. One frame per second when idle; a paused stopwatch draws none. Written in Rust, drawn with egui on OpenGL.

  • PRIVATE

    No telemetry, no account. Once a day it asks GitHub whether there is a new release, sending nothing but its name and version; check_updates: false in the settings file turns that off. Updates are signature-checked before they install, and nothing downloads until you click.

Install

Windows 10 or 11. No admin rights needed.

Setup ChronoDesk-Setup.exe

Installs for your user only, in %LOCALAPPDATA%\ChronoDesk. Adds a Start menu shortcut and an Installed apps entry, then starts the clock. New versions arrive as a one-click item in the menu.

Download Setup

Portable ChronoDesk.exe

The same program; run it from anywhere and nothing is installed. It still keeps its settings in %APPDATA%\chronodesk, and its update item opens the release page.

Download portable exe

SMARTSCREEN

The exe isn't code-signed, so Windows SmartScreen may warn the first time. Choose More info → Run anyway. Checksums are in SHA256SUMS.txt, and in-app updates are signed and verified before they install.

Check the download in PowerShell

Get-FileHash .\ChronoDesk-Setup.exe -Algorithm SHA256

Compare the result with the line for the same file in SHA256SUMS.txt.

Uninstall

Settings → Apps → Installed apps, or run chronodesk.exe --uninstall. Your settings in %APPDATA%\chronodesk stay in place.

Build from source

Rust 1.95 or newer: cargo run --release — Building notes in the README

Download for Windows Star on GitHub