Noctua

A minimal clock app for Linux and Android.

Five screens. Animated backgrounds. Alarms that fire.

Screens

Horizontal swipe, arrow keys, or the icon pills on the right edge.

Clock

Digital time and date. Configurable font and colour. Moon icon toggles night mode — dimmed display, no seconds or date.

World Clock

Search 115 cities or add a custom UTC offset. Drag to reorder. DST-aware.

Alarm

Alarm screen placeholder One-shot and repeating alarms. Emoji shortcode labels (:bell:, :fire:, :pizza:). Day-of-week toggles. Dismiss or snooze 10 min.

Timer

Timer screen placeholder Scroll-drum input. Multiple simultaneous timers. Saved presets with emoji names. State persists across restarts.

Stopwatch

Stopwatch screen placeholder Lap recording with fixed-width layout.

Settings

Settings panel Animation, font, time format, colour mode (dark/light/system), alarm and timer sounds, per-screen colour, keyboard shortcuts.

Features

Animated Backgrounds

Five styles — Lava Lamp, Raindrops, Bubbles, Breath, or None. Bubbles runs on the GPU via GLSL. Breath is a morphing organic blob. Speed, density, and amplitude are tunable.

Per-Screen Colour

Each screen gets its own colour. Pick from named presets (blue, purple, green) or dial in a custom hue. Independent settings for dark and light modes.

Sound Selection

Android pulls ringtones directly from the system. On Linux, any .oga or .wav in /usr/share/sounds/freedesktop/stereo is available. Separate pickers for alarm and timer.

24h / 12h Format

One tap in settings. Applies everywhere — Clock, World Clock, alarm list, and time picker.

Saved Timer Presets

Name presets with emoji shortcodes — :tea:, :pomodoro:, :pizza:. Type :te and a suggestion row appears. New presets activate immediately on save. Edge pills auto-hide after 3 seconds.

Keyboard Navigation

Arrow keys cycle screens. Bindings are configurable. Disabled automatically while typing.

Settings Overlay

Tap anywhere to reveal the gear icon. It hides after 3 seconds. The sheet covers animation, font, time format, colour mode, sounds, per-screen colour, and keyboard bindings.

Config File

JSON at ~/.config/noctua/noctua_config.json (Linux) or app documents (Android). Hand-edit if you want.

Getting Started {#getting-started}

Requirements

Platform	Minimum
Linux	GTK 3, PulseAudio (`paplay`)
Android	API 21 (Android 5.0)

Linux (from source)

git clone https://github.com/opennomad/noctua.git
cd noctua
mise exec -- flutter run -d linux

mise manages the Flutter and Dart toolchain. Install it first if you haven't, then run mise install in the project root.

Android

mise exec -- flutter run

On first launch Noctua requests notification, exact alarm, and full-screen intent permissions. All three are needed for alarms to fire and show on the lock screen.

Technical

Built with Flutter 3.41 / Dart 3.11.

Package	Purpose
`flutter_local_notifications`	Alarm and timer notifications on Android
`timezone`	DST-correct world clock and alarm scheduling
`google_fonts`	Runtime font loading
`path_provider` · `xdg_directories`	Platform config paths

Source: github.com/opennomad/noctua

Noctua — named for the little owl.