Glance Bridge

An iPhone app for the Glance Clock, the Bluetooth wall clock from the 2016 crowdfunding campaign, whose original app is no longer available.

A Glance Clock showing the next 24 hours of temperature as a ring, blue for cold and orange for warm, with 7 degrees in the centre — The weather ring: the next 24 hours of temperature, blue for cold and orange for warm, with the current 7° in the centre.

Not on the App Store. This is a personal project that I wrote for my own clock, and I don't plan to sell it. If you own a Glance Clock and would like to try a TestFlight version, contact the developer.
Request a test build

Like it? Glance Bridge is free, and test builds are free too, so there's no need to pay anything to try it. If it has brought your clock back to life, you're welcome to buy me a coffee. It's entirely optional.
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On the clock

A Glance Clock showing the word Coffee in the centre with a glowing amber ring around it — A message from the app, with a pulsing ring.

A 10-second timer: the green ring shrinks as it counts down, then the clock shows “Done”.

In the app

The Glance Bridge quick screen with weather, timer presets, message box and brightness — Quick screen

Clock settings: brightness, time and date, night mode and do not disturb — Clock settings

The scene lab for drawing a progress ring on the clock — Scene lab

What it does

Quick screen: one-tap weather update, timer presets, a message box and brightness, all on the first screen.
Weather ring: the next 24 hours of temperatures drawn on the clock's LED ring, in °C or °F.
Timer: counts down on the clock, and can silence the alarm after a few seconds so it doesn't ring until you reach it.
Messages: scrolling text with your choice of colour, animation and sound.
Clock settings: brightness (including auto), 12/24 hour, date format, night mode, do-not-disturb and mute.
Ring graphics: a progress ring, moving bars, pulses, built-in animations, and snow, rain or fog effects.
Shortcuts: actions for sending a message, updating the weather, starting a timer and showing progress, so Siri and automations can drive the clock.
Stays connected: it reconnects to the clock by itself, and refreshes the weather when the clock reconnects if it is over an hour old.

What it can't do

Read your phone's notifications

iOS doesn't let one app see another app's notifications, so messages from WhatsApp or Messages can't appear on the clock automatically. Shortcuts can send your own text.

Alarms and calendar events

The clock's alarm and calendar commands are only partly understood, so Glance Bridge doesn't use them yet.

Change the timer alarm's volume

The clock has no volume setting, and its timer alarm ignores mute. Glance Bridge works around this by silencing the alarm for you a few seconds after it starts, while the app is open.

Work on every clock

I have tested it on one clock. Other firmware versions may behave differently.

How it works

Glance Bridge talks to the clock directly over Bluetooth, with no server or account in between. The clock's Bluetooth protocol was worked out by the community, and I'm grateful to the author of the public glance-clock documentation, which this app builds on. The clock sets its own time from your iPhone.

Privacy

There are no accounts and no analytics, and the app doesn't send anything to me. It uses your approximate location only to fetch the local forecast from a weather service, and remembers it on your phone so Shortcuts can update the weather later.

Unofficial

Glance Bridge is an independent project. It is not made, endorsed or supported by the makers of the Glance Clock, and "Glance" belongs to its owners. It is provided as is, and it shouldn't be relied on for anything important, such as timing medication.