If we think about the apps and games that we use on our smartphones, it’s unlikely that many of us will give a second thought to the humble clock app. Even though a lot of use it on a daily basis to make sure our bosses don’t yell at us for being late and if you’re the overachieving sort, to time dishes or track lap times. Regardless, the Clock app on Android has gotten a lot better since the release of Android 5.0 Lollipop and its Material Design makeover wasn’t the only change Google made as it was also released as a standalone app. Meaning updates can be made much more easily, independent of OTA updates, and version 4.3 has surfaced with a number of new tweaks, including the ability to change the size of homescreen widgets.
The new version of the Clock apps (which users can download and install here) features some new animations when confirming actions and such, and it also adds support for audio over Android Wear. This relates to the new features that are heading to the Huawei Watch and the larger ASUS ZenWatch 2 with their fancy speakers. Now, the Clock app will make a noise on your watch as well as your phone. Elsewhere, there are fully resizable widgets now included (which a couple screenshots below to show as much) and those that had some issues seeing the reported Night Mode should now be able to use it without any issues.
Overall, this is a pretty small update to a fairly simple app, but it’s good to see that Google is keeping on top of their first-party apps, even one as mundane as Android’s clock app. if you haven’t been using the stock Clock app on Android, now might be a good time to give it a whirl, you might find that it’s a lot more minimal and easy on the eye than the last time you used it, and naturally it blends in with any modern version of Android painlessly. If you can’t wait for the update to come through from the Play Store, we’ve linked to the download further above for those impatient folk.
