TinyKlok

There’s a fixed amount of time each day and so much to do. This makes time tracking an important task, and Windows already informs you of the exact time right on the desktop. Third-party customization options are also available. For instance, TinyKlok comes as a minimalistic desktop click with various visual tweaks.

One of the first things you notice is that there’s no setup involved to take any of your time and effort. This makes it easy to carry around on a thumb drive to have it in sight regardless of the computer you’re working on. What’s more, the target PC remains intact, because registry entries are not affected by runtime.

It shows up on the desktop in a compact, minimalistic window with no particular visual elements to make it stand out from the crowd. It can be easily moved across the desktop, while size can be adjusted by dragging edges from a specific point. What’s more, the desktop position is remembered so it shows up in the same spot on every launch.

An attached context menu holds a few visual customization options, as well as the only function to close the application besides killing the associated process, because no tray icon, or taskbar entry is created.

In case you don’t want it to obscure the desktop space there’s an opacity slider which makes the main window transparent. A secondary theme is available, but it only switches contrast to white, with no possibility to set color. In case you want to have it launched at startup, adding a shortcut in the system Startup folder solves the problem.

All things considered, we can state that TinyKlok is a straightforward desktop enhancement which quietly sits on the desktop to inform you of the time. Customization options are rather poor though, with only two color schemes, and there’s no possibility to configure alerts.