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Show HN: Analog Watch
- al_borland 2mo agoThis could be good for kids to learn how to read analog clocks. I remember this being something we did in school as kids... racing to read a clock faster than the other kid, to move on to the next section of an obstacle course. From what I understand that is becoming a lost skill.
- mikestew 2mo agoTen years ago the kids across the street from us (who were 9-10 at the time) would ask the time, and I’d show them my watch. They’d still ask what time it was because they couldn’t read the analog face on my watch. The oldest is in college now. Next time I see her, I’ll ask if she ever learned to read an analog face.
- craftkiller 2mo ago> kids to learn how to read analog clocks [...] From what I understand that is becoming a lost skill. I don't think kids need to learn to read analog clocks anymore, in the same way that we don't teach kids to use slide rules. Technology has advanced enough that analog clocks have joined polaroid cameras and vinyl records in the "obsolete technology that some people use for nostalgia or fashion" category. (for the record, I grew up with analog clocks and I am fully fluent in using them.)
- forlorn_mammoth 2mo ago> Technology has advanced enough that analog clocks have joined polaroid cameras and vinyl records assumption digital 'more advanced' than analog. unclear. How digital more 'advanced'? Is regression, not advance. Analog watch. See gap between minute hand and start of meeting. See gap get smaller. Instant. Colleague in different time zone? See hour hand -3 steps, faster than "14 - 3 is 11". If digital even have 24 hr time, many no. Teach kids. Analog visible, easy to read, child can see. Child can turn hands on wooden clock, manipulate. Now plus 1 hour, now plus 1.5 hours. Move long hand forward 1 rotation, 1.5 rotations. Digital? Teach kids "now plus 90 minutes" digital? Hard math. now plus 90 is now (hour) plus 1 and now (minute) plus 30. Teach kids "now minus 10". Does hour change? Why hour change? why now hour different from now minute? daddy daddy what about now seconds? All abstract, cannot touch. Daddy why move hour number first? Digital. 1 on microwave less than 99. Where else in world 1 < 99 makes sense? Digital time math crazy.
- craftkiller 2mo agoThe technology I was thinking of was digital screens. Analog clocks made sense when the best you could do was attach some arrows to some gears on a rotating shaft. Now we can individually toggle lights in a grid containing millions of lights. > Digital. 1 on microwave less than 99. Where else in world 1 < 99 makes sense? Digital time math crazy. Everywhere? 1 is always less than 99 everywhere.
- forlorn_mammoth 2mo agoI press 1 on my microware. It starts to run for 1 minute. I press 99 on my microwave. It starts to run for 99 seconds. 1 minute < 99 seconds.
- craftkiller 2mo agoYes, they're different units. Just like how 1 month is less than 99 days and 1 pound is less than 99 ounces. That isn't a digital vs analog thing.
- Clamchop 2mo agoThis isn't anything to do with digital time, it's just a convenience of recent microwaves. The digital microwaves of the 1990s did not have this feature, but they were still digital. If you input 1, you just got 1 second. On microwaves that do have this feature, set the power first to bypass it.
- al_borland 2mo agoThere are still analog clocks all over the place in public spaces. Sure, a person probably has their phone on them, but it seems strange that people wouldn't want to know how to read them instead of just seeing them as weird slowly moving art installations. Analog clocks also have the benefit of being able to better visualize time. A lot of people with ADHD talk about time blindness. One common thing sold to them are analog countdown timers that look like a big pie chart. An analog watch effectively does the same thing, especially a dive watch. The user can see how much time they have instead of needing to calculate it and try to translate that into some kind of meaning. Rarely does anyone need to know the exact time, and the analog clock shines at giving an approximate time quickly, to see progress, without actually ever having to know what time it is. A progress bar for the day, if you will. One of my favorite watches is one with a single hand and a 24-hour dial. I like it for weekends and vacation. I want a watch, I want to know roughly where I'm at in the day, but I don't want to stress about the minutes.
- rahimnathwani 2mo ago"One common thing sold to them are analog countdown timers that look like a big pie chart." For anyone looking for one of these, you can search for 'time timer'.
- mrweasel 2mo agoWatches and clocks just aren't ageing out as quickly as so much other tech. Analog watches also have the advantage of being able to so someone why our clocks are the way they are, by comparing them to solar clocks. Also it would be a bit to close to Futurama to see e.g. Big Ben get a digital overhaul.
- Timpanzee 2mo agoAnalog clocks are still being taught in schools, at least partially, for their mathematical education purposes. The age at with kids learn to read analog clocks is the same age where kids are skip counting and starting to see numbers in different modes of representations, both of which analog clocks provide, forcing kids to think mathematically in their everyday lives. Further in their math education, it also becomes a helpful jumping off point for understanding modulo arithmetic and non-base 10 counting systems.
- basisword 2mo agoBy that logic they don’t need to learn much at all. They can just ask AI.
- revision17 2mo agoIt can also be lost over time! I finished high school (which had analog clocks in all the classrooms) a long time ago, and have always used digital clocks in my adult life. I recently purchased an analog watch on a lark, and it took me a week or two of use before I could read it quickly again!
- dwa3592 2mo agowould be nice if the results also showed the analog watch positions.
- ezekg 2mo agoGood idea! I'll see if I can add into the next release.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- ventana 2mo agoThis fun game just made me realize that actually using analog watch does not require converting the time to HH:MM. I've been using analog watch for years, my Apple Watch face is set to analog and, apparently, I read the time as "it's almost 11", but never as "it's 10:58".
- mikestew 2mo agoThe same “kids across the street” I reference in another comment needed translation from “quarter to eleven” when they’d ask the time. Makes sense given they couldn’t read an analog face at the time.
- jammaloo 2mo agoSimilarly, when I moved from the UK to Canada, people often didn't understand what I meant when I said it was "half ten", which is the common way of saying ten thirty, at least where I grew up.
- SanjayMehta 2mo agoI never heard that when I lived in the UK in the 70s, but only in Ireland in the late 90s.
- huflungdung 2mo ago[dead]
- gumby 2mo agoI’m a “quarter past” person but I’ve always been confused by “half ten” (which thankfully isn’t used in Australia). But in German, “half ten” means 9:30, which is make more sense to me (probably because I’m used to how German speech often drops words, which is less common in English)
- NopIdoN 2mo ago
- austinthetaco 2mo agomy only issue is that it cares if you are off by 1 minute, meanwhile in the real world a lot of analog clocks have continuously moving minutes and a lot of others have ticking minutes (they only move right at the minute mark).
- ezekg 2mo agoAppreciate the feedback! It cares, yeah, but being off-by-a-minute doesn't really dock your overall score very much. I figured without that, a "perfect" would be much less meaningful.
- 1-more 2mo agoI don't think jumping minutes are very common at all, right? If it took A. Lange & Söhne inventing it in 1999, it's gotta be rare https://www.alange-soehne.com/eu-en/manufacture/art-of-watchmaking/flyback-mechanism https://www.alange-soehne.com/eu-en/manufacture/art-of-watch...
- cge 2mo agoThat's just presenting improvements to a mechanism; while it isn't common, particularly for watches, and I don't know much about earlier examples, they do seem to exist. For clocks, however, there is the iconic Swiss railway clock [1], which dates back to 1944 and has a jumping minute. For those, however, the jump is actually meaningful in itself, in they're synchronized by a master clock that has a one minute impulse, and the jump is actually the moment of the impulse. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_railway_clock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_railway_clock
- cjfeda 2mo agoThis was fun! Good call on directing to the free play before jumping into the daily challenge. I was disappointed when I realized there was no leader board for the daily challenge.
- ezekg 2mo agoThanks for playing. It's been a fun little game I play to make sure I don't embarrass myself when somebody asks me what time it is, since I wear a lot of watches. I'd love to add a global leaderboard, but right now it's all client-side! A server-authoritative leaderboard seemed a bit too complex, especially i.r.t. preventing cheating, but I might tackle it at some point.
- gatlinnewhouse 2mo agoI did find it easier to do but that's because I wear analog watches everyday (I don't need distractions on my wrist). The other comments did remind me that when asked for the time I always give an estimate quickly and then read the exact time a little later. I almost always round to the nearest minute or quarter of an hour, and almost never read the seconds hand. Fun game!
- great_psy 2mo agoCould this be extended to lean into teaching quantum physics ? Include seconds/ sub seconds hand in the watch, and people will realize the watch face time + time it takes to read will never equal the watch face time. You can know the exact time, by looking at the analog watch face, or you can measure it (convert it) but it will not be the same anymore.
- piosin 2mo agolove it
- glitchc 2mo agoThe daily challenge doesn't seem to work for me. 58 seconds for the second clock is correct yet it said I was just close.
- cl3misch 2mo agoIt seems to not support 24h? When I see e.g. 17:35 I want to type 17:35 instead of 5:35. Probably because I very seldomly see 5:35 in real life! Interesting observation by itself, but slightly annoying that I have to convert to 12h for this game.
- ezekg 2mo agoInteresting! There is no am/pm, but I could definitely add it!
- fuzzfactor 2mo agoHow about a simple light/dark theme where it's 0100 when dark and 1300 when light? Now when people ask me what time it is and I say 1845, they often follow up with "What time is it really for normal people?" Quarter 'til 19 of course.
- toxik 2mo agoI did the very same thing. Interesting phenomenon. I mainly use "analog watches", well, they're facsimiles of analog watches on digital devices.
- jceg 2mo agoWell, that was harder than expected.
- ezekg 2mo agoHa! It's quite embarrassing isn't it? Practice makes perfect!
- all2 2mo agoTo OP, you should look into Barbara Arrowsmith-Young's clock exercises. They start with a single hand, and add more and more hands until the units get out into centuries or millennia.
- kaizenb 2mo agonice! analog.watch Daily Challenge 2026-07-09 Score: 8,946 Time: 39.2s
- sejje 2mo agoChallenge Complete 29,493 Completed in 22.3s Nailed it! You've got great timing.
- meshweaver 2mo agoFun game! Definitely needed the practice rounds. Would love to see a comparison of some sort of how well everyone else did. analog.watch Daily Challenge 2026-07-09 Score: 22,020 Time: 32.0s
- yegle 2mo agoHmm, 12AM/PM watch faces don't register 0 as the hour.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- pimlottc 2mo agoCorrecting your previously-entered time by selecting the hour and tapping a different number doesn’t work. It initially shows the hour selected but then overwrites the right-most component (eg seconds)
- ezekg 2mo agoThanks for the report! Will try and fix this in the next release.
- toxik 2mo agoOff topic but it annoys me so much that Apple decided not to make the hands see-through as they pass the day window on the face. Like even the actual analog clocks do this with a little window on the hand?
- al_borland 2mo agoI once saw a watch that had a button to move the hands out of the way to see the complications. I submitted feedback to Apple that they should add something like this. With it being digital, they have all kinds of options, like having the hands fly off and grow back over a few seconds.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- danteocualesjr 2mo agoyou’ve basically turned ‘can you read an analog face?’ into a little daily ego check. nice.
- ezekg 2mo agoHa! Very true. I embarrass myself regularly with this little game. :)
- fusslo 2mo agoFor some reason this brings back memories of looking for clocks or strangers with a watch while walking around a department store or mall I mustve forgotten how common 'public' clocks used to be. Now... not even the clock on my local town hall is correct
- stets 2mo agoHa! Got a good laugh. Two suggestions: - Let me enter the time with my keyboard - Make your input numpad match a PC keyboard's numpad, not a phone's
- ezekg 2mo agoI may have missed numpad support because I have a 60% keeb! Normal number keys work fine for me. Will investigate.
- jacknews 2mo agolol, this completely misses the point of analogue watches or clocks. It should be called 'keypad data entry game' instead. The point of an analogue clock is that it gives you an instant sense of the rough time at a glance. I can immediately see it's 'about half past' or 'only a few minutes left until the meeting at 11' or whatever.
- ezekg 2mo agoThat works great until somebody sees your watch and asks you for the exact time!
- jacknews 2mo agoThen just show them the watch, or look at your phone or whatever. How often do you need the exact time, and don't have a means to get it, like in tv broadcasting etc?
- ezekg 2mo ago> or look at your phone or whatever > have a means to get it ... in tv broadcasting etc I think you're missing the point of wearing an analog watch, which is fine, but still missing the point nonetheless. :) As an avid watch wearer, all analog, I built the game so I could improve my skills, because under pressure when somebody asks "what time is it?", I want to be able to tell them exactly, because I should be able to read it! I think it's good to want to improve your skills, whatever that may be. You shouldn't bar people from that because you disagree.
- jacknews 2mo agoI don't disagree you should improve your skills. but I don't think your app is optimized for that. But, ok you're the gamemaker, then well done building something, and I hope people enjoy it. For me, an analogue watch is good for giving you an extremely glance-able approximate time. And potentially as exquisite mechanical jewellery. If you need to know the really exact time to the second and want to be able to tell it quickly, you might be better with a digital watch, especially vs a mechanical watch where a mickey-mouse digital is more accurate than even a COSC mechanical. But my initial point is that your game is not so much about recognizing the time, even the exact time, but about entering it into the keypad. Maybe add a multiple-choice mode - show the analogue clocks, pick the digital match.
- sensorlinqapps 2mo agoFun game. I would suggest a competative mode with more clocks. Gets people to actively play against one another