Idle Hours

Somewhere in a classic novel, a character checks the clock, and it's the time it is now. Idle Hours finds that line and puts it on your television. A CLOCK MADE OF SENTENCES Every five minutes the screen changes to a passage that mentions the time: "a quarter to ten", "just after five o'clock", "the clock struck midnight". The time itself is picked out in the passage, so a glance tells you the hour, and a longer look gives you a paragraph of Dickens, Hardy, Verne, Conan Doyle or Hugo. 6,715 PASSAGES FROM 289 BOOKS Every line comes from a public-domain book on Project Gutenberg, read for its time phrases, cleaned, attributed and ranked for how well it reads. A passage you have seen stays off the screen for a week. DOZENS OF WAYS TO SHOW IT A split-flap board that flips between quotes. A Fell-press page printed in black and red. A stained-glass window that lights pane by pane. A Whistler nocturne with gold lights on the river. A cross-stitch sampler that sews itself in. An amber CRT, a transit map, a library card, a movie-palace marquee, and many more. Each new passage arrives with its own small piece of theatre, then the screen stays calm. SET IT AND LEAVE IT Pick one theme, let it shuffle with every passage, or choose one for the day and another for the night. Leave it on while you read, while friends are over, or through a quiet evening: it's an app rather than a screen saver, so open it and leave it, and the Apple TV stays awake until you press Menu. The picture drifts a few points now and then and dims after an hour without a remote press. NOTHING TO SIGN UP FOR No account, no internet connection, no ads, no tracking. Everything the app needs is on the Apple TV. Swipe left or right to change theme, up or down to see where the passage comes from, and click to open settings.