Most software tells you what it needs. It sends notifications. It opens on startup with a loading screen. It asks for your attention before it gives you anything in return. The clock on your computer is different — or it should be. A clock should tell you the time, and then disappear.

CoreClock was built from that premise. It is a world clock for Windows that lives in the system tray, shows the time for any city you choose, and makes no further demands. No subscription. No telemetry. No account. Just a clean panel, a set of cities, and the current time in each.

Design Philosophy The best utility software has no personality. It does not express itself. It does not have opinions about your workflow. It simply does the one thing it exists to do — reliably, quietly, and without asking for anything in return.

The Problem with World Clocks

If you work across time zones — with a remote team, a trading desk, clients on three continents — you have probably tried to solve this with a browser tab, a phone widget, or a Windows clock setting. Each works, technically. None of them works well.

Browser tabs disappear behind your work. Phone widgets require picking up your phone. The Windows clock supports multiple time zones, but it buries them behind a click and shows them in a list that was clearly designed for someone who rarely uses it. The information exists. The friction to get it remains.

CoreClock puts the information where you already look — on your screen, in a panel that opens immediately and closes when you are done with it. The cities you care about are always there. The times update every second. There is nothing else to configure.

What the Panel Shows

CoreClock
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New York
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London
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Tokyo
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Dubai
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Sydney
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Frankfurt
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Time Display
Current time for each city, updated every second. Configurable between 12-hour and 24-hour format, with optional seconds display. Rendered in Consolas — a monospace font chosen so digits do not shift position as time changes.
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Date
The current date for each city shown beneath the city name. A small but necessary detail for anyone managing calls across the international date line.
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Flag and City Name
Each city displays with a flag emoji and the name you assigned it. The list is yours — you define which cities appear, in what order, with whatever label makes sense to you.
System Tray
CoreClock lives in the system tray when not in use. Double-click the tray icon to show or hide the panel. The application continues running silently in the background, consuming minimal resources.

Built for Customisation

The default configuration shows six cities: New York, London, Tokyo, Sydney, Dubai, and Frankfurt. These are not the cities you necessarily work with, and you are not expected to keep them.

Every city is editable. You can add a city for any time zone in the Windows timezone list, assign it a flag emoji, and give it whatever name helps you recognise it quickly. A trading desk might label a city by exchange. A distributed team might label cities by the people who live there. The application does not have opinions about this.

Cities can be reordered by dragging them into place. The order you set is the order they display, every time. Your most-checked timezone goes at the top.

Privacy by Default

CoreClock does not connect to the internet. Time zone data comes from Windows directly. There are no analytics, no usage reporting, and no background network requests. The application reads your settings from a local file and writes them back to the same place.

This is not a feature. It is simply the correct way to build a clock.

Platform and Distribution

.NET Runtime
WPF UI Framework
10 / 11 Windows Version

CoreClock is distributed through the Microsoft Store and available as a standalone installer for environments where the Store is not used. The application starts with Windows if you choose, minimises to the tray on launch, and restores its last position when opened. Window size and position are saved between sessions.

View on Microsoft Store
Who This Is For CoreClock is not for everyone. It has no graphs, no health data, no news feed. It shows the time. If that is what you need — across several cities, reliably, without clutter — it will serve you exactly as intended.
The Underlying Belief A world clock you forget is running is a successful one. CoreClock aims to be exactly that: visible when you need it, invisible when you do not, and never once asking you to upgrade, subscribe, or share your usage data.