[SOLVED] Clock desklet with Always On Top option?

[krauster]

Mint 20 Cinnamon
I have my Panel at the top of my main monitor (second monitor is an old dell precision M4500 laptop running Mint). The current time is in the top right corner, but the panel is set to autohide so I have to run the cursor up there to see the time.
I've loaded a few different clock desklets but none of them allow me to always keep on top. Does anybody know of a clock desklet that has this?

This used to not be a concern when I wore a wristwatch.....

[shedyed]

I use cairo-clock; several themes are available and you can specify -t on the command line, or right click on it to set <I>always on top</I>, show on pager, show in every workspace, show seconds, show date, etc.

I think that there is a theme pack but individual themes can be viewed on deviantart.com.

And like you, I wear a wristwatch

[krauster]

I think the desklet you are recommending is for the cairo dock. I don't use that dock. I have been using the Plank doc.

It got me thinking to check the clocks available within the Plank dock, and it turns out there is one..... BUT, because I use the dock along the bottom of the main screen, the same way I use the Mint Cinamon panel at the top - I have it set to autohide - I find that isn't really what I want. I want the clock to be on the screen while the dock and panel are in autohide mode, and I want it to be in a Always on Top mode for any open windows that are under it.

[shedyed]

It is a standalone app, and doesn't require the dock. But cairo dock users can choose the plugin or the resizable clock, so you can stick to plank AND have this too.

[krauster]

From the Mint 20 Software Manager I do see "Cairo-dock-clock-plug-in". But I don't see any Cairo clock that doesn't look like a plug in. That is the one I downloaded and installed and found that it didn't run because I assume I don't have Cairo.

In the Software Manager I do see a lot of other clocks so I will search for something there.

[Khagg]

I'm also interested in something like this, It would be useful when giving a presentation (not slides), reading one's notes from a document, with the clock always on top one could keep track of the time even when in full screen mode.

So far none of the desklets seems to fit this use case. Cairo-clock sounds interesting but just like krauster I only see the plugin version...

[shedyed]

You can grab the https://packages.debian.org/cairo-clock from debian.org. This is not the plug-in; to be honest. It has been rock-solid for ages, and only the skin has been changing-- those are up to you and your aesthetic taste (I prefer the Swiss rail-clock look, myself)This is the one deb I always install, regardless of distro. As always, try it out first. If you break anything, you keep the pieces

[Kendoori]

I got it from here: http://ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/main/c/cairo-clock/

[krauster]

Always a chance to get confused and hopefully learn a little something in navigating around:

I downloaded the file: cairo-clock_0.3.4-2+b2_amd64.deb from http://ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/main/c/cairo-clock/

I don't know what the other files do there but this seemed the latest.
I double clicked that .deb file and installed.

It looks good and has a lot of themes and the Simple one is really nice because it has 50% transparency so it can run in Alway on Top and not be in the way of anything.

But it doesn't have a launch at boot of computer option.
So I went to Mint's Startup Applications and after a while I found it to select. I was looking for "cairo-clock" as the app's name but it is actually "MacSlow's Cairo-Clock". I have it set to open the clock at start up.

But it looks broken. It is laying the simple clock over another clock.
https://imgur.com/T88vpi2


I may have corrupted something while I was figuring this stuff out, because when I first looking for the file name when I couldn't find cairo-clock I did open the rc file that had a message of editing at your own risk although I did not edit it. But it seems that is where the settings are being stored and maybe they are broken in there.

I tried uninstalling the app and reinstalling but that didn't fix the broken setting. BTW, it seems to me that because the app was not installed through the Software Manager, it is not available to uninstall there. Through the app's options I put it into the Panel. And with it in the Panel it had a Uninstall option so that I could uninstall it. Then with it uninstalled, and a reboot, I went to the downloads directory and click the .deb file to reinstall again. My logic was that maybe the uninstall and then reinstall would clean out the clock-cairorc file settings file. But apparently it didn't because it remembers the settings from before the uninstall.

[shedyed]

Hey I've had this happen, see if you can fix it this way. Drag the clock to the corner opposite, or simply drag it to a clean spot. Right-click on it to bring up the menu, and select 'Properties'. Set up a different size for the clock, like 300 wide by 300 tall. Check all the boxes that matter to you e.g. "Keep on top""Show on pager" etc. Close the menu, bring it up again to exit the program.

Now bring it back again from the command line or menu. At least the hands have returned to the center of the clock. Or I hope they did.

[krauster]

It seems that it works okay when I have it set to large (200x200) with the Simple theme. Any smaller than that always makes the clock face scale wrong compared to the clock hands. I also noticed that I can right click on the clock to enter Properties, but only once. After I make the change in Properties it won't let me open the Properties window again unless I quit it and restart it.

But it's working well enough to use, I guess.

[Khagg]

Thanks for the extra details on where to get Cairo-clock. This is exactly what I needed

I also get the bug with the clock face and hands (it happens after closing and reopening the clock, haven't found a pattern yet, sometimes it is fine - Cinnamon 19.3) but I am able to fix it by entering the properties and resizing the clock. So aside from this small inconvenience, it's perfect. Using the Radium theme.
Thanks again!

[Khagg]

I notice another bug with cairo-clock... wonder if anyone has come accross this and knows a fix?

Sometimes the clock hangs at a certain time, the minute hand stops moving, sometimes it seems as if it updates itself ~ every 2 minutes. Also it is usually ~ 30 seconds to 1 minute behind the system clock. When the clock hangs, I can resync it by entering the properties dialog and closing out of it again. Where does cairo-clock get it's time? is there a way to fix this?

when launched from the terminal, I get this output:

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(cairo-clock:19050): Gtk-WARNING **: 15:33:14.728: GtkSpinButton: setting an adjustment with non-zero page size is deprecated

(cairo-clock:19050): Gtk-WARNING **: 15:33:14.729: GtkSpinButton: setting an adjustment with non-zero page size is deprecated

(cairo-clock:19050): libglade-WARNING **: 15:33:14.733: could not find a parent that handles internal children for `vbox'

thanks in advance,
K

[Khagg]

I found a solution to the problem of Cairo-clock being slow/stuck
Here is a manual page for the app: https://www.mankier.com/1/cairo-clock

Running Cairo-cock from the terminal with the option --refresh=60 seems to have fixed my problem.

Code: Select all

cairo-clock --refresh=60

.

You can also add your themes and other options in the command line:

Code: Select all

cairo-clock --theme=radium --refresh=60 --ontop

Enjoy!