On Apple Watch
Settings, Accessibility, Chimes. A sound marks the top of every hour.
Apple Watch chimes every hour. Your Mac doesn't.
Bird Chimes puts that gentle hourly cue in your Mac's menu bar, using a real bird call instead of a tone.
Free to download. macOS 14 and later.
Twenty seconds, sound on
The chime is the product, so this is worth hearing.
Starts muted when it scrolls into view. Nothing plays sound until you ask it to.
The gap
watchOS has it. macOS never got it.
On macOS
Nothing equivalent. The closest built-in option reads the clock aloud in a synthetic voice, which interrupts rather than marks.
With Bird Chimes
A real bird call from the menu bar. You notice an hour has passed without looking at anything.
Control
Quiet by default
Three settings, then you can forget it is there.
Your interval
Every 15, 30 or 60 minutes. Hourly is the default.
Quiet Hours
Set the hours it stays silent. Overnight, for instance.
Focus aware
Turns itself off while a macOS Focus mode is on, and back on afterwards.
Origin
Why a sound and not a clock
Apple files hourly chimes under Accessibility on Apple Watch. A clock only helps if you remember to look at it, and remembering to look is the part that fails. A sound does not ask you to remember anything.
Bird Chimes was built because the developer's brother is blind and uses VoiceOver. It is equally useful if tracking time is hard for you, or if alarm tones simply feel harsh.
The app
Lives in the menu bar
