secondsinsight.

vol.01 · 2026

a durational studio

mac · iphone

secondsinsight.

a durational design for time

§ 01 · the argument, in four parts

the hour is an administrative unit that got out of hand.

  1. Twenty-four came from Egyptian star clocks. Sixty, and then sixty again, came from Babylonian counting carried forward through Greek astronomy. It is inherited bookkeeping laid over one rotation of the Earth, and nobody in that chain was trying to describe how an afternoon feels.

  2. Mechanical clock time was standardised for coordination: railway timetables, factory shifts, telegraph networks. That was the whole brief, and it worked. We mostly arrive at the same moment now.

  3. Felt duration drifts from measured duration, and it drifts predictably — with attention, arousal, novelty and the state of the body. In ADHD the gap is wide enough that pooled studies keep finding it.

  4. Duration is the part you live in: things starting, spreading, arriving. That is what the instruments here are for.

Twelve references behind those four claims

§ 02 · the first release

a timer that shows a stretch of time while it passes

mac beta · iphone in review

The Mac menu-bar panel: a large pale coin on a soft grey ground, ringed with tick marks, about a third of them coloured in. A horizontal teal line crosses the coin, labelled 70 per cent beside a small speaker icon — that line is the volume. In the middle sits a dark split button, a teal pause on the left half and a magenta stop on the right, with 17:23 of 25:00 beneath it and 30 per cent below that. Under the coin: chips from plus 5 to plus 60, a progress bar, a row of minute dots, and a bar for the whole day reading 17 min and ends 12:43 pm, with a magnified inset of one hour marking your 17 min, done by 5:00 am.
Mac · menu-bar panel — seventeen minutes from the end. Click the eye in the menu bar and this opens: no window, no Dock icon, nothing in Command-Tab. Shot from the current beta, older palette and all.

A timer for time blindness. Nineteen ways to perceive time — visual and audible — so you stop clock-watching and still know where you are. Built for ADHD brains, useful for everyone.

Every mode is its own switch. Keep the two or three that work on you and turn the other sixteen off.

Nine of the nineteen are audible, so the timer works with the screen ignored, dark, or no use to you at all. Controls are labelled for VoiceOver on both platforms.

tessera clock · one tile = one minute8 of 25

iPhone

one screen · nothing to navigate

The iPhone timer running. A pale coin fills the upper screen; the ring of ticks around it has turned teal for the first third. A teal line crosses the coin at 60 per cent, marking the volume. In the centre a dark split button holds a teal pause and a magenta stop. Below it the digits read 17:19 of 25:00, then 31 per cent. Beneath the coin: a progress bar filled a third, a row of minute dots with seven lit, the plus-5 to plus-60 chips, and a day bar labelled 17 min and ends 11:00 pm, with a magnified inset of the 7 to 8 pm hour marking your 17 min, done by 7:48 pm, fits 12 times more.
Running — the strip at the foot magnifies twenty-five minutes inside the actual evening, beside the twelve more like it that still fit.
The same iPhone timer, nineteen seconds past the end. Every tick on the ring has flipped from teal to magenta, the background has drifted to pale pink, and the digits read plus 00:19 OVER at 100 per cent. The teal volume line still crosses the coin with a speaker badge reading 60 per cent, and the bar below the coin is one solid magenta band with a single magenta dot underneath. The day bar reads 0 min, ends 11:00 pm.
Past the end — the ring flips to magenta, the screen washes pink, and it keeps counting up, readable from across the room.
The iPhone timer at rest: the coin shows 00:00, zero per cent, and a teal play triangle in the centre, with the volume line low across it and a speaker badge reading 15 per cent. Directly under the coin a wide pill reads NEXT, standup, 09:29, in 12 min. Below that the settings button, the plus-5 through plus-60 chips with minus-1, clear and plus-1 underneath, and a day bar reading 0 min and ends 11:00 pm.
Reading the calendar — the next event sits under the coin, and the timer can start itself when the event does, for the event's length.
A sheet titled BENCH covering the lower two-thirds of the iPhone screen, the dimmed timer coin still visible above. Left column headed SEE TIME: digits, percent, bar-ring and progress bar are switched on, with fill chosen over drain; dots and tint on; blob off. Right column headed HEAR TIME: pings on with 5m chosen from 1m, 5m, 10m and 15m; alarm on; chimes, pulse, tick, drone, metronome and jazz off. Centred underneath, a dial labelled ESCALATE 50 per cent with a teal arc filling half its circle.
The bench — one switch per mode, see on the left and hear on the right, both columns in view at once with nothing three taps deep. Shot before the audio was rebuilt, so its hear column is out of date; the list on this page is current.

see time

  • Big digitsplain and large
  • Percentone number
  • Depleting ringticks emptying
  • Progress barfill or drain
  • Minute dotsone dot per minute
  • Ambient tintscreen drifts colour
  • Shrinking shapegets smaller
  • Your whole daywith a zoom-in
  • Menu-bar metermac
  • Floating coinmac · always on top

hear time

  • End soundsoft landing or alarm
  • Harmonic dispersionone tone widens
  • Phase shifttwo copies drift, rejoin at zero
  • Interval pings1 · 5 · 10 · 15 min
  • Milestone chimes25 · 50 · 75 · 100%
  • Final-minute pulsepitch steps down
  • Pulse bed0.5 · 1 · 2 a second
  • Ambient droneswells
  • Noise beddeep to bright

Mac, without a window

two surfaces that never need a click

A small round always-on-top window about the size of a coaster: a pale disc showing 17:23 in heavy dark digits, encircled by a ring that is roughly two-thirds olive green and one-third empty.
Floating coin — sits over whatever you are working in, never takes keyboard focus, never scrolls away. Shown close to actual size.
A strip of the menu-bar icon at successive stages of a timer, each drawn at two sizes. It begins as a narrow, almost shut eye, opens wider as time passes, the pupil swelling until it fills nearly the whole shape, and ends as a solid filled eye with a small spark at its upper right. The same run appears twice: once on a light menu bar and once, underneath, on a dark one.
Menu-bar eye — a slit at idle, wide near halfway, all pupil at the end, with a spark once you are past it. Read it without opening or focusing anything. Drag the strip sideways for the later stages.

§ 03 · availability

how to get it

free beta · app store to follow

The Mac beta is a free download today.

Download the Mac beta free

It is unsigned, so right-click the app and choose Open the first time, past the macOS warning. A notarised build is coming.

the paid apps

They arrive on the App Store: the iPhone build is in review now, the Mac app follows. One purchase covers both, no subscription.

state of things

  • Mac betafree, available now
  • iPhonein app store review
  • Mac, App Storeto follow
  • Sourcereadable, polyform noncommercial

What is coming next, and what is not here yet

Nothing on this site takes a payment or an email address. The source sits under the PolyForm Noncommercial licence, so you can read exactly what runs your timer.

The rest of the house

Evidence
Twelve references: interval timing, attention and arousal, timing in ADHD, circadian drift, standard time.

Learning
Bergson on duration, Husserl on retention, Reich's phase pieces, Basinski's tape, clocks made of incense and flame.

Not yet
An incense clock, a light clock, a tape piece, a tessera wall clock. None made yet. Also what lands next in the timer.