Terrella World Map Watch Face

BasilBase

About this app

Terrella prints a world map on a watch dial and runs the real day and night line across it. Not a decoration that turns once an hour - the boundary is computed from the sun's declination for the day you are wearing it, placed by the clock, with the equation of time folded in.

THE LINE IS COMPUTED, NOT COPIED

The terminator carries eighteen shapes across the year, one for each band of solar declination: deeply bowed near the solstices, standing almost upright at the equinoxes. A warm line marks the boundary itself and a graded wash falls away from it into the night side, so the map reads as lit and unlit rather than as two flat colours. It sweeps west all day and wraps at the antimeridian without a seam.

The name is William Gilbert's: in 1600 he ground a lodestone into a sphere and called it a terrella, a little earth. Same idea, with light instead of magnetism.

YOUR CITY, FOUND BY THE CLOCK

A marker sits on the map at the city your watch's time zone names, and it breathes - an expanding ripple, so a glance finds it. 598 zone identifiers are in the table. Nothing to set, nothing to type: change zone on a flight and the marker has already moved.

It is a time zone, not a fix. A zone can be hundreds of kilometres across, so the mark lands on the city that names it, not the street you stand in.

WEATHER NEEDS ONE PERMISSION, ONCE

The left bay under the map draws the current condition and the temperature, and Wear OS does not give watch faces location access by default. Until you allow it, that bay shows -- rather than a made-up zero:

Settings > Security and privacy > Permission manager > Location > Watch faces > Allow while using the app

That entry stays in English whatever language your watch speaks. Everything else - map, line, marker, clock, date, battery gauge - works the moment you install it. Sixteen conditions have their own drawn mark, each in its own colours, and a clear sky at night gets a moon instead of a sun.

FIVE COMPLICATION BAYS

Three along the foot of the map, two round ones beside the clock. All five are yours, and all five take the same set: short text, ranged value, monochromatic image, small image - or empty, if you would rather it went dark. Out of the box the middle bay shows steps, the right one heart rate, and the left draws the weather until you give it something else. Of the two by the clock, the right arrives on the next sunrise or sunset and the left on the barometer from Samsung's Compass where that app exists. Each bay draws the icon its own provider ships, so the mark changes with the data.

WHAT YOU CAN CHANGE

The editor is in English.
Colour: Signal, Ember, Bone - the map, the marker and its ripple.
Type colour: White, Amber, Mint, Coral, Sky, Gold - clock, date, readouts and the battery gauge.
24-hour clock: on out of the box; off gives twelve hours with AM or PM above.

Eighteen combinations, every one of them dark: a pale map fills the disc, and a filled disc lights an OLED all day. Press and hold the dial, tap Customize, swipe sideways.

ALWAYS-ON

Its own composition rather than a dimmed copy: a sparser lattice of the map, the marker, the hour. The line, the bays and the gauge are not drawn, which keeps the lit area small enough to leave on.

WHAT IT DOES NOT SHOW

No latitude or longitude, and no position of any kind - Watch Face Format has no such source, and the marker is a time zone lookup. No wind, no UV, no distance, no calories, no seconds. Sunrise, sunset and pressure it does not compute either: those reach the bays from the watch's own providers.

BEFORE YOU BUY

Wear OS 5 or newer (API 34): Galaxy Watch4 and later, Pixel Watch, other Wear OS 5 watches. No phone app, no ads, no subscription, no purchases, and nothing is collected.

If it does not arrive, sign in on the watch with the same Google account. Google Play's refund window applies.

If you have a question, or something is not working right, please write to us at [e-mail].

What’s new

First release.

A world map on the dial with a real solar terminator across it: the day and night boundary computed from the sun's declination and placed by the clock, equation of time included. Eighteen shapes across the year, a warm line on the boundary and a twilight wash behind it.

A marker on the city your watch's time zone names, breathing so you can find it. 598 zones in the table.

Five complication bays, three map palettes, six type colours, 24 or 12 hours, its own always-on frame.