Keep the times that matter visible on your GNOME desktop.
Desktop World Clocks is for people who coordinate with teams, customers, friends, or family across time zones and want to avoid repeatedly opening another application or doing mental time-zone arithmetic. It places world clocks directly on the desktop, above the wallpaper and below application windows.
Create one compact group or arrange up to four independent groups across desktop corners and monitors. Each group can contain ten clocks, for a total of 40, with its own time zones, labels, layout, typography, colors, opacity, time format, and background.
Install Desktop World Clocks from the GNOME Extensions website. The approved release supports GNOME Shell 49, 50, and 51.
Watch the MP4 demonstration or view the full desktop screenshot.
Desktop World Clocks is designed to provide a calm, always-visible view of global time without becoming another application to manage. The clocks stay beneath application windows, do not capture clicks, and can be as minimal as a transparent list or as detailed as four separately styled groups.
The extension follows the desktop instead of working around it. Time zones come from the installed system database, fonts come from GNOME, configuration uses native GTK and libadwaita controls, and every clock reads the existing system time and synchronization service.
Privacy and efficiency are part of the design. One shared timer updates only when needed and pauses during Overview, suspend, and full-screen use. The extension makes no network requests, collects no telemetry, performs no separate time synchronization, and starts no helper process or permanent background service. Settings and managed background images stay in the user’s account.
| GNOME Shell | Compatibility status |
|---|---|
| 49 | Core suite passed on 49.9 in an isolated Fedora 43 container; image and physical-session checks pending |
| 50 | Tested on Fedora 44 with GNOME Shell 50.4, in an isolated Wayland session |
| 51 | Core suite passed on 51.beta in an isolated Fedora development container; image, physical-session, and final-release checks pending |
The core suite exercises real Shell and native preferences, including layouts, timers, colors, clock editing, and cleanup. Container image tests are excluded because the nested image-decoder sandbox cannot run under this host’s container restrictions. Full compatibility is not yet verified on GNOME 49 and 51. See validation and remaining checks.
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Show one to four independent clock groups, each with its own clocks, corner, monitor, fonts, colors, opacity, layout, background, and time format.
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Choose from the installed IANA time-zone database, including aliases and UTC. Duplicate zones with different labels are supported.
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Add, remove, and reorder up to ten clocks per group. A blank description uses the selected location name, such as
America/New_York→New York. -
Pick any font family available to GNOME using its native font chooser. Set font size, text opacity, global color, and individual clock color overrides.
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Hide the time-zone abbreviation per clock, or hide all abbreviations with the global switch. Abbreviations follow daylight-saving rules; numeric zone names display as UTC offsets.
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Five layouts: inline, aligned time column, large time with label above, two-column grid, and a wrapping horizontal strip.
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Four corner positions, monitor selection, edge margin, 12/24-hour time, optional seconds, optional date difference, and text shadow.
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Transparent, solid-color, or local-image backgrounds for the clock group. Text opacity is independent of the background. Images use centered cover cropping.
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An About tab shows the license, build information, GNOME targets, GitHub repository, issue tracker, and time/privacy details.
Each clock group shrinks to fit when the selected font, labels, and clock count exceed the available desktop space. Grid and strip layouts adapt to monitor width. Monitor −1 follows the primary monitor; nonnegative values select a monitor by its current index. A disconnected selection falls back to the primary monitor.
Open Groups, set Number of groups to 4, and use Group to edit to choose which group the Clocks and Appearance pages configure. Group 1 preserves your existing clocks and settings. New groups start with one UTC clock in the top-right, bottom-left, and bottom-right corners; customize their clocks as needed. Each group’s corner and monitor can be changed in Appearance.
Reducing the count hides the higher-numbered groups and retains their settings. Increasing it restores them. Large groups can overlap on small screens; reduce font size or clock count, or choose another layout or monitor.
All clocks read the same existing system clock. The operating system's time service (for example, Fedora's chrony) handles synchronization and NTP source selection. The extension does not choose or guarantee the closest server, install a service, request administrator access, or run its own NTP client. Configure nearby pool or local NTP sources through the system's existing administration tools.
Preferences show the system-reported synchronization status, with a manual refresh and an Open Date & Time button. Status can be unavailable on systems without the standard time-status service; clocks continue displaying system time. No server, offset, accuracy, or last-sync measurements are invented.
The desktop component has one shared timer, aligned to minute boundaries by default. The same timer serves all four groups. If any visible group shows seconds, it wakes once per second, while minute-only groups skip formatting until the minute changes. It caches up to ten zone objects per group (40 total), reuses clock widgets, and changes text only when needed. It pauses updates in Overview and during suspend. Groups on a monitor with a full-screen application pause independently. Empty or hidden groups consume no clock timer; hidden groups release their desktop actors. Disabling the extension removes its timer, signals, D-Bus subscription, and actors. The desktop component starts no web view, network polling, telemetry, helper process, or Node.js runtime. Native preferences may use the operating system’s own image-decoder and portal services.
The native preferences process loads fonts and the time-zone list only when needed. Selected PNG/JPG/WebP images must be local regular files and at most 10 MB; bounded reads and raster-signature checks enforce that limit before decoding; preferences prepare a copy no larger than 2048 × 2048 pixels in $XDG_DATA_HOME/desktop-world-clocks (normally ~/.local/share/desktop-world-clocks). Replacing a group’s image removes its previous managed copy if no other group references it. The original stays untouched. Missing images render without an image and can be replaced in preferences.
These resource controls and the measured observations recorded in the development notes are not CPU or memory guarantees. Leave seconds off and use a transparent background for the lowest update and image-memory cost.
Install the approved release from the GNOME Extensions website, then open the extension preferences in the GNOME Extensions app to add clocks and choose their appearance.
Desktop World Clocks requires GNOME Shell 49–51. Normal GNOME installations provide the required runtime libraries and time-zone data.
Building from this repository additionally requires GJS, GTK 4.20 or later, libadwaita 1.8 or later, GLib, the system tzdata package with /usr/share/zoneinfo/tzdata.zi, the GNOME Extensions command-line tool, Python 3, and glib-compile-schemas. Node.js is used only for development linting.
From this repository:
python3 scripts/package.py
gnome-extensions install --force dist/desktop-world-clocks@infamous-pattern.github.io.shell-extension.zipOn Wayland, log out and back in after the first installation or a code update. Then enable and configure:
gnome-extensions enable desktop-world-clocks@infamous-pattern.github.io
gnome-extensions prefs desktop-world-clocks@infamous-pattern.github.ioYou can also enable it and open preferences through the GNOME Extensions app. Version validation should remain enabled. Clocks are click-through and configured from preferences. They are not displayed on the lock screen.
To stop or uninstall:
gnome-extensions disable desktop-world-clocks@infamous-pattern.github.io
gnome-extensions uninstall desktop-world-clocks@infamous-pattern.github.ioUninstalling leaves saved preferences and the managed image available for a future installation.
npm ci
npm run lint
npm test
npm run test:security
python3 scripts/test-shell.py
npm run packThe Shell test creates a disposable software-rendered Wayland session with separate settings and data directories; it does not install into or alter the active desktop. See development notes for test requirements and scope.
The implementation follows the GNOME Extension Developer Guide, including synchronous lifecycle cleanup, separate Shell and GTK processes, modern ES modules, GSettings, cancellable preferences I/O, and a runtime-only distribution. The maintainer reviewed the runtime source, confirmed that they understand it, and accepted responsibility for maintaining it. Version 2 was approved by the GNOME Extensions review team on September 20, 2026, and is available from the official extension listing.
The approved browser concept remains in design/preview.html; its time-source controls are historical mockups. The actual extension uses the existing system service as selected during implementation. See design decisions.
If Desktop World Clocks makes coordinating across time zones easier, you can buy me a coffee to support its continued development.
Project concept, product direction, desktop testing, and maintenance: James Senecal.
Extension coding, tests, documentation, and build tooling: OpenAI Codex, working collaboratively with and under the review of James Senecal.
License: GPL-2.0-or-later. See LICENSE.