Linux Candy: sigye – terminal clock

Linux Candy is a series of articles covering interesting eye candy software. We only feature open source software in this series.

Some of the programs in this series are purely cosmetic, frivolous pieces of fun. Candy at their finest. But we also include some programs that aren’t purely decorative.

There’s a diverse range of programs included in this series. Programs such as eDEX-UI and Variety are actually highly practical programs. ASCIIQuarium has soothing and relaxing qualities for your desktop. Other programs included in this series (such as lolcat, cacafire) are included purely for their decorative qualities. And then there’s some really fun software that just raises a smile or two.

sigye is a terminal clock with ASCII art fonts. The name “sigye” (시계) means “clock” in Korean. It also offers Pomodoro functionality and lots of customization. This is free and open source software.

Installation

I evaluated sigye with Manjaro, an Arch-based Linux distribution.

There’s a package in the Arch User Repository (AUR) which I built using Pamac (Manjaro’s GUI package manager). The AUR is a community-driven repository for Arch Linux users that contains package build scripts (PKGBUILDs) for software not in the official repositories.

The program builds with no issues.

The program is very easy to build from source using cargo, Rust’s package manager.

In Operation

Issuing the command sigye showing the following output.

The bottom bar has the essential keyboard shortcuts. The t and c shortcuts should be self-explanatory. The customization options are more interesting, accessed by pressing s.

The settings page is divided into 4 pages:

Clock – The software comes with 40 different FIGlet fonts, everything from Star Wars to Big Money-ne. Here’s the Terrace font.

The clock setting lets you choose between 17 colour themes, not just plain cyan. For example, there are rainbow, gradient, and winter effects to choose from. I can choose between 24 hour or 12 hour clock, and whether or not to show seconds.

Animation – there’s a variety of animation options to choose from. By default animation is turned off, but I can choose shifting, pulsing, wave, and reactive animations. I can define the speed of the animation as well as the background.

Pomodoro – The Pomodoro Technique stands out as one of the simplest yet most powerful productivity tools. It’s designed to keep procrastination and distractions at bay, allowing you to tackle tasks efficiently. All you need to do is commit to starting a timer. They automatically switch between work and break sessions, count how many cycles you complete, and eliminate the need to fiddle with a manual timer or continuously monitor the clock.

This section lets you define the work period, the break time, the long break time, and sound alerts.

Timer – set the duration.

Summary

Every self-respecting desktop environment has a decent clock. But sigye is still useful not only for users who prefer using just a window manager. It’s much more sophisticated than the typical tray clock with a helpful Pomodoro functionality.

If you spend a lot of your day in terminals, it’s a useful tool with plenty of candy effects.

There are many other standalone clocks available for Linux which we explore in this roundup.

Website: github.com/am2rican5/sigye
Support:
Developer: am2rican5
License: MIT License

sigye is written in Rust. Learn Rust with our recommended free books and free tutorials.

Complete list of articles in this series: