DateTime

An desktop clock doesn’t need to be too complex, and the utility being reviewed here is just about as simple as they get, at least at first glance.

DateTime was designed to provide you with a basic time and date widget for your desktop, and it is very easy to deploy. It isn’t a particularly impressive piece of software, but it is unobtrusive and offers a decent set of visual customization options.

The widget may not look all that modern, but it is important to note that its visual design can be customized quite extensively. While it displays both the time and date by default, you can disable either of these by entering F, D or T in the Date/Time Format field.

You can move the widget to any position and lock it if you want to keep it in place. You also have the option of making it snap to the edges of the screen.

From the style tab, users can modify the widget’s padding and background color, increase the window’s opacity and alter the border’s color and thickness. The default font can also be changed, but you have to type its name yourself unless you enable Advanced Mode.

A lot more settings can be customized from the Advanced tab, but some of them can be quite confusing for novices, and no documentation is provided. Nevertheless, users have a lot of freedom when it comes to altering the clock’s look and behavior.

In the end, DateTime looks like an application that could use a more work, but it can still be useful if you are prepared to spend some time playing around with the settings. In any case, it comes in a lightweight package and is very unobtrusive.