Nocturne for MAC

Nocturne is a small menu bar app for Mac that stops the menu bar clock from telling you how late it is. macOS offers no switch to hide the clock, so Nocturne makes it unreadable instead: in its default Blind mode it turns the clock into a small analog dial, so the time is still there but your eye stops catching it. Other modes go further and blank the clock, the whole menu bar, or every icon except the clock. Clicks still pass through, and Nocturne keeps its own moon icon visible so you can always switch back.

Nocturne is made by DotcomJack and is free and open source under the MIT license. It can follow Focus: add it as a Focus filter in System Settings, and when you turn on Do Not Disturb or another Focus on any of your devices, the Mac's menu bar goes quiet too, then returns to the mode you had when the Focus ends. It asks for no permissions at all, not Accessibility, not Screen Recording, and uses no private APIs. Version 1.5.0 is about efficiency: nothing changes on screen, but the app uses far less CPU at rest. Nocturne needs macOS 14 or later and is a universal app for Apple Silicon and Intel Macs. It is signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple, so it opens without a Gatekeeper warning. One mode, Gone, is labelled experimental by the developer and can leave a faint seam on the translucent menu bar.

Key Features

Nocturne gives you five ways to quiet the menu bar.

• Blind mode: the default, which turns the clock into a small analog dial you cannot read at a glance.
• Hide everything: blanks the whole menu bar except Nocturne's own icon, while clicks still work.
• Only the clock: hides every icon but leaves the clock readable.
• Gone: an experimental mode that draws a patch over just the clock.
• Follow Focus: a Focus filter that switches modes when a Focus starts and puts your mode back when it ends.
• Hover to show: uncovers the bar while the pointer is on it, in Gone, Hide everything and Only the clock.
• Clock options: drop the date, the day of the week or AM/PM without changing modes.
• No permissions: no Accessibility, Screen Recording or Full Disk Access, no account and no private APIs.

Nocturne 1.5.0 changes nothing on screen but makes the app much lighter.

• CPU use at rest fell from 0.173% to 0.042%, and wakeups from 3.71 to 1.00 per second, in the developer's measurements
• CPU use while the pointer moves fell from 3.76% to 0.60% with Hover to show on
• Timers and the hover monitor stop while the displays sleep and catch up when they wake
• Quitting no longer restarts Control Center when the clock is already digital