Dancing Clock Help Documentation

A complete guide to Dancing Clock, from the first poke to the alarm.

Last Updated: November 10, 2026

1. Getting Started

Above the stage, the digital clock shows the time with seconds and the date; beside it are 24 hour, Sound (with the list of voices while the sound is on) and How it works. The stage shows Tico in front of a sky that follows the hours, and the line under it says how Tico feels, what it is doing and when the alarm rings. Under that are three cards: Actions, Mood and Alarm. The round button at the top right switches the site between light and dark; the stage keeps its own colours.

Press Sound to hear Tico. Keep the page open in a tab while you rely on the alarm, and click it once after it opens so it may make sound.

2. Meeting Tico

Tico is a brass alarm clock with two bells and a hammer on top, gloves and boots. Its hour, minute and second hands show the time of your device; the second hand jumps each second with a small bounce. Its eyes follow your pointer, or your finger on a phone, and when you leave them alone they look around, blink and look ahead. When the page opens, Tico greets you for the time of day and waves.

3. Poking Tico

Click or tap Tico, or press Tab until it has a white ring around it and press Enter or Space. It jumps, looks surprised for a moment and says something like "Boop! Hello there.", then goes back to the mood it had. While the alarm rings, a poke stops the alarm.

4. Walk and Dance

• Walk (W): Tico strolls from one edge of the stage to the other and turns round, swinging its arms and bells. Press Walk again to stop; Tico drifts back to the middle.
• Dance (D): three moves, the twist, the disco point and the jump and tuck, each for four seconds in turn, with a beat if the sound is on. Dancing makes a sleepy or grumpy Tico happy. Press Dance again to stop.

A lit button shows what Tico is doing. Walking stops a dance and dancing stops a walk; the bell stops both.

5. Talk and Tell Time

• Talk (T): Tico says a line that fits its mood, or one of its general lines.
• Tell time (C): Tico says the time in words, such as "It's a quarter past 3 in the afternoon.", "It's half past 7 in the evening." or "It's exactly 12 noon.".

The words always appear in the speech bubble; with the sound on, Tico also says them aloud with a voice of your device.

6. Moods

Five moods change Tico's face, its lines and its voice: Happy (rosy cheeks, a wide smile), Surprised (big eyes, raised brows, an open mouth), Sad (drooping brows, a tear), Angry (frowning brows, red eyes, clenched teeth) and Sleepy (heavy eyelids, a floating z, a slow voice). Pick one with the buttons or the keys 1 to 5. A mood you pick is kept for at least 90 seconds before Tico may change it by itself.

7. What Tico Does by Itself

Every 9 to 18 seconds, while the page is in view and Tico is not walking, dancing or ringing, and you have not just moved the pointer, Tico may say a line, stretch its arms, wave and say hello, or cheer up and become happy again. Between 23:00 and 6:00 it often gets sleepy and yawns. Every hour it chimes (see section 10).

8. The Sky

The sky behind Tico is a picture of the time of day on your device's clock: dawn from 5:00, day from 7:00, dusk from 17:30 and night from 20:30, with drifting clouds, stars at night and the Sun crossing the sky from 6:00 to 19:00 and the Moon from 19:00 to 6:00. It is the same everywhere and in every season, not your real sunrise or sunset; the Sun and Moon tool on this site gives those for your place.

9. Sound and Voice

Sound (or S) turns on everything Tico can be heard by: the ticking every second while the page is in view, the hourly chime, the dance beat, small blips, the bell and the voice. The sounds are made in your browser. The voice is one that runs on your device, English first; online voices, which would send Tico's words to a speech service, are never used. When your device has several voices, a list appears next to the Sound button; your choice is kept. The voice's pitch and speed follow Tico's mood. On a device with no voice of its own, the words appear in the bubble only.

10. The Hourly Chime

On the hour, while the page is in view, Tico's bells rock and, with the sound on, it plays a short tune and strikes the hour: one stroke at 1:00 and 13:00, twelve at 12:00 and midnight. Unless it is walking or dancing, it also says "Bong! It's 3 o'clock." and so on. There is no chime while the alarm rings or while the tab is out of sight.

11. Setting the Alarm

Under Alarm, pick a time in the box and press Set (or Enter). The label beside it says when it rings, with "silent" added while the sound is off, and the line under the stage repeats it. The alarm rings every day at that time until you press Clear. A time that has already passed today, including the minute you are in, rings first tomorrow.

With the sound off, the alarm still makes Tico shake and shout in the bubble, but there is no bell: turn the sound on for an alarm you need to hear.

12. When the Alarm Rings

Tico shakes, its bells and hammer rattle and it shouts in the speech bubble; with the sound on, the bell rings in bursts twice a second. The tab's title says Alarm ringing. Stop, Esc or a poke silences it; Snooze 5 min rings again five minutes later, and the line under the stage says until when. After a minute the bell stops by itself. The Ring button (A) tests the bell the same way, without Snooze.

13. When the Alarm Can Ring

Only while this page is open in a tab and the device is awake. The page compares the alarm with the clock four times a second and, when you switch to another tab, sets an extra timer for it, so a tab in the background still rings, perhaps a little late; Tico then says how many minutes late. If the page was closed or the device asleep at the alarm time, an alarm found up to ten minutes late still rings; one found later does not ring, and a message says Tico could not ring at that time. The alarm stays set for its next time.

In places with summer time, an alarm inside the hour the clocks skip rings as many minutes later as the clocks jumped, and one inside the hour they repeat rings once.

14. Keyboard and Accessibility

• W walk, D dance, T talk, C tell the time, A ring the bell, S sound on or off, 1 to 5 the moods, Esc stops the alarm.
• The letter keys work while the tool is in use, not while you type in a box or a window is open. Esc stops the alarm wherever you are on the page.
• Tab reaches Tico and every button; Enter or Space pokes Tico. Every button that turns something on or off says whether it is on.
• Tico's words are also read out by screen readers.
• With reduced motion turned on in your device, Tico stands still instead of bobbing, stepping, dancing or shaking, the clouds stop and the second hand jumps; the moods, the words and a walk across the stage still work.

15. Privacy and Your Data

The alarm, the 24 hour choice, the sound and the voice are kept in this browser under one entry for this tool and never sent to a server; nothing is saved on a first visit until you change something. Settings from the earlier Dancing Clock app are brought over once. Delete everything, in How it works, removes them after you confirm. Like every page on ZeroDataUpload, this page shows ads; the Privacy Policy explains them.

16. How It Was Checked

Before this page was published, the engine behind the tool was checked against references written from the rules on this page, with the test values made first: 3,431,584 cases in 13 groups. They include the digital clock, the hands and the time in words for every minute of the day, the sky for every minute, the alarm over a whole year in several time zones (summer time changes, the hour skipped and the hour repeated) checked at regular and very irregular moments, in a hidden tab and after a device slept for hours, so that it rings exactly once or is reported as missed, the snooze, Tico's moods and actions through long random runs, walking and Tico's size on stages of every width, the voices chosen from lists of local and online voices, and saved settings made to break the tool. Then the page was tried at four screen widths in both themes.

17. Troubleshooting

• Tico does not speak. Turn the sound on; check that the device is not muted. If the words only appear in the bubble, the device has no voice of its own; on many systems voices can be added in the language or speech settings.
• The alarm rang without sound. The sound was off, or the page had not been clicked since it opened; the note above the stage says so.
• The alarm did not ring. The tab was closed or the device asleep; a message says Tico could not ring. Keep the tab open and the device awake, and set one on your phone for anything important.
• The alarm rang late. The tab was out of sight and the browser woke it late; Tico says how late.
• Tico is sleepy and will not cheer up. Pick Happy, or walk or dance; late at night Tico gets sleepy again after a while.
• My alarm is gone. It is kept per browser and device; a private window or cleared browser data starts afresh.

18. Support

For questions the FAQ does not answer, use the contact form.