Every once in a while, you come across a beautiful app that makes you smile whenever you use it. Tinker is one of those apps for me. It allows you to create beautiful analog clock widgets for your iPhone, and its attention to detail is remarkable. It has a few curated designs to get you started, but you can also bring in your own clock faces and customize every aspect of the widget. The best part—it works with StandBy mode.
In addition to your calendar, the iPhone’s StandBy mode lets you view photos, live activities, or a clock when the iPhone is charging in landscape mode, essentially turning it into a convincing substitute for a real alarm clock. Tinker adds far more options for the analog clock widget, and for me, the result is a lot nicer than the clock widgets Apple supplies.
I quite like the design language of Tinker, too, which reminds me of the skeuomorphic designs that iOS had embraced until 2014, when iOS 7 moved in a different direction. Tinker’s app icons mimic the gears in a watch, and the buttons have a neat brushed metal look. All of this will appeal to the kind of person who enjoys analog watches in this digital age. Once you start creating your own watch face in the app, you’ll be able to customize four aspects of it—the background, the hour hand, the minute hand, and the center piece. While you’re doing that, you’ll notice another neat detail—the watch face accurately shows you the current time even while you’re customizing the widget.
Credit: Pranay Parab
There are a few templates available to get you started, and the app directs you to a Discord server if you want even more assets. You’re also free to download assets from the internet and add them on your own. This gives you a lot of customizability. Once you’ve found or created a watch face, you can easily add it as a widget on your iPhone’s home screen . Press and hold an empty part of the home screen and tap the Edit button in the top-left corner. Select Add Widget and search for Tinker. You’ll be able to select any of your saved watch faces and add it to the home screen.
Similarly, once you’re in StandBy mode, you can tap and hold the clock widget and replace it with one of Tinker’s watch faces instead. The app is free for up to two watch faces, and has a one-time $4 unlock to remove that limit.
I really don’t know why Apple still stubbornly refuses to let you use your own watch faces on the Apple Watch, but if it ever decides to change its mind, Tinker is exactly the kind of app that I’d use to customize mine. I don’t care too much about adding complications to my watch face, but I do care a lot about how the watch face looks. With Tinker, I’ve already found a few designs that I’d like to use on the Apple Watch over the included options. Here’s hoping Apple caves and lets you use your own watch faces with Tinker some day.
