The whole guide.

Everything Fuginaut does, tab by tab. Press / to search.

Getting started

Fuginaut runs on Apple silicon and Intel Macs with macOS 14 or later. It asks for no permissions and has no account.

Mac App Store: coming soon.
Homebrew: run brew install --cask dcadolph/tap/fuginaut.
Download: get the disk image, open it, and drag Fuginaut to Applications.

Open it and a clock appears at the center of the menu bar. There's no Dock icon and no window to manage. To open settings, click the clock or right-click the eclipse in the menu bar and pick Settings…. Every change shows in the live preview at the top of the window and on the real clock right away.

The eclipse icon

The eclipse in the menu bar is Fuginaut's icon. It glows amber while the clock is on and goes plain while it's off.

Click turns the clock on or off.
Right-click or Control-click opens the menu: Turn Clock Off or Turn Clock On, Settings…, and Quit Fuginaut. The Homebrew and download versions add Check for Updates….

If you hide the icon, open Fuginaut again from Applications to get back to settings, or click the clock if that's still on.

Size

Setting	What it does
Size	How big the clock reads, from 9 to 40 points. The default is 13.
Nudge	Moves the clock off the center of the bar, up to 600 points left or right, to clear a busy spot.

Text

Setting	Choices
Font	System, Rounded, Mono, Serif, or any font family installed on your Mac.
Weight	Regular, Medium, Semibold, or Bold.
Capitals	As written, ALL CAPS, or lowercase.

Color

Text color

Match the menu bar is on by default, which draws white on dark menu bars and black on light ones. Pick a color to turn it off. You can pick from a grid of 24 swatches, type a hex value, or use the color wheel.

Backing

A backing keeps the text readable over busy wallpaper. Style is None, Shadow, or Pill. Automatic color uses the opposite of the text color. Turn it off to pick a backing color the same three ways.

Format

Date styles

The Style picker has sixteen styles, plus Custom pattern: Short, Long, Day first, Day first, long, With year, Long with year, Day first with year, Numeric, Numeric with year, Numeric, padded, Dotted, Numeric, day first, ISO, Compact ISO, ISO week, and Day of year.

Parts of the clock

Setting	What it does
Weekday, Date, Time	Switches that show or hide each part.
Order	Date first or time first.
Between	What separates the date and time: spaces, a dot, a bar, a comma, a slash, a dash, or the word “at”.
24-hour time	Switches between 12-hour and 24-hour time.
AM and PM	PM, pm, or None, for 12-hour time.
Leading zero	Shows 09:05 instead of 9:05.
Seconds	Adds the seconds.
Before, After	Text or emoji on either side of the clock. Press Control-Command-Space for the emoji picker.

Custom patterns

Choose Custom pattern in the Style picker to write your own pattern using Unicode date letters. Put literal words in single quotes. Emoji work as typed. The menu beside the field holds ready examples and the common pattern letters, and the reset button returns to EEE d MMM HH:mm.

Pattern	Writes
`EEE d MMM HH:mm`	Sun 8 Nov 09:41
`h:mm a '·' MMMM d`	9:41 AM · November 8
`HH:mm:ss zzz`	09:41:00 CST
`'Week' w '·' EEE HH:mm`	Week 46 · Sun 09:41
`🚀 EEE d MMM HH:mm`	🚀 Sun 8 Nov 09:41

World

Setting	What it does	Choices
Language	Writes the day and month names. Languages other than English use their own word order when the month is written as a word.	Automatic or one of 27 languages.
Numerals	Writes the digits.	Automatic, Western, Arabic-Indic, Persian, Devanagari, Bengali, Gurmukhi, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu, Tibetan, Thai, Lao, Burmese, Khmer, or Chinese.
Calendar	Counts the date. ISO styles stay Gregorian.	Automatic, Gregorian, Islamic, Islamic, civil, Islamic, Umm al-Qura, Hebrew, Persian, Indian national, Buddhist, Japanese, Chinese, Coptic, or Ethiopian.

The languages are Arabic, Bengali, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Dutch, English (U.S. and U.K.), French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, and Vietnamese.

Second time zone

On the World tab, Time zone adds a second time beside the clock. Search the list by city, zone name, or UTC offset. Label sets the text beside that time, and it uses the zone's abbreviation if you leave it blank.

General

Setting	What it does
Displays	A switch for each connected display.
Show the clock	Turns the clock on or off everywhere, the same as clicking the eclipse.
Show when the menu bar hides	Keeps the clock up in full screen apps.
Click the clock to open settings	When off, clicks pass through the clock to whatever is under it.
Show menu bar icon	Shows or hides the eclipse.
Open at login	Starts Fuginaut when you log in. If macOS asks, allow it in System Settings, under General, then Login Items.

Restore Defaults and Quit Fuginaut are at the bottom of the tab, beside the version number.

Displays and notches

Fuginaut draws a clock on every display you leave on. While an external display is connected, a laptop's own screen starts with the clock off, because the clock is meant for big screens. A laptop on its own shows the clock. A choice you make in General always wins.

On a screen with a notch, the clock slides beside the notch when it fits.

App Store and download versions

All the versions draw the same clock with the same settings. They differ in a few ways.

	Mac App Store	Homebrew and download
Updates	The App Store handles them.	Checks GitHub a minute after launch, every six hours, and when you ask. It announces each new release once.
Network	No network access.	Requests to GitHub for the latest release. Turn off Check for updates automatically in General to send nothing until you ask.
Sandbox	Runs in Apple's sandbox.	Signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple.
Open at login	Off until you turn it on.	Turns on the first time it runs from Applications.

Moving to the App Store version can carry over settings from a Homebrew or download install.

Reset and uninstall

Restore Defaults in General puts every setting back except Open at login. To uninstall, quit Fuginaut and delete it from Applications, or run brew uninstall --cask fuginaut if you installed it with Homebrew.

More help

Open an issue on GitHub. The source is there too, under the MIT license.