<!--
.. title: This is not a 24-hour clock
.. slug: 24-hour-clocks
.. date: 2026-04-16 22:40:59 UTC-07:00
.. tags: 
.. category: 
.. link: 
.. description: What a 24-hour clock *should be* vs what we end up getting in software
.. type: text
-->

A 24-hour clock should cycle every 24 hours. Seems obvious right? But in a lot of apps, we get something like this:

![The 24-hour time picker in Google Calendar, showing 23:00 at the same position as 1:00 but in a different ring.](/images/24h/google-24-hour-time-picker.jpeg)

This is basically two 12 hour clocks jammed together.
It forces you to think in lowly 12-hour terms rather than thinking about what part of the entire day cycle you need.

It gets worse too:

![The "orbit" clock in the Kvaesitso launcher, which is essentially just a 12 hour clock but with 24-hour text](/images/24h/kvaesitso-orbit-clock.jpeg)

This is Kvaesitso's "orbit" clock when you have the system set to 24h. 
It's basically just a 12 hour clock with a 24 hour face. The bigger planet still has a 12 hour orbit but it displays 0-23 instead of 12-12.

What *should* a 24 hour clock look like? Behold, one of the few things OnePlus did right in their buggy-ass OS:

![The 24-hour clock in OnePlus's built-in Clock app](/images/24h/oneplus-alarm.jpeg)

0 is at the top, 12 is at the bottom, and it cycles once a day. Glorious.