Nightfall-Clock

A clock that tells you what tonight brings.

Every player on your server gets the day and time just above their hotbar: "Day 4 · 2:35 PM". At 6:00 PM it turns gold and starts counting down to dark, so everyone knows whether there's time to make it home before the monsters come out.

This is Nightfall Clock as a plugin for Paper 26.3 servers. Drop it in your plugins folder; players need nothing installed. (Nightfall Clock is also a Fabric and NeoForge mod, on CurseForge.)

What your players see

• The clock, in the action bar above the hotbar: "Day 4 · 2:35 PM", white by day and gold from 6:00 PM until dark.
• "The sun's getting real low" as a gold title when dusk arrives as the day runs, with the countdown under it. Jumping ahead with /time set or sleeping doesn't set it off.
• A countdown to dark: "Day 4 · 6:42 PM · dark in 24s". It counts real seconds to the moment it's dark enough for monsters to spawn outside.
• "Storm's rolling in" as a title when thunder starts, since monsters can spawn in daylight during a thunderstorm.
• The Overworld's time in the Nether and the End: "Overworld: Day 4 · 9:12 PM", so nobody steps back through the portal into the night.

Each player picks

• /clock turns your own clock off or back on.
• /clock 12 or /clock 24 picks 12-hour (6:00 PM) or 24-hour (18:00) time.

The server remembers each player's choice.

For server owners

• Players need nothing. It's a plain Paper plugin. Vanilla and modded clients join as usual.
• Six settings, one file: plugins/NightfallClock/config.yml.
• Permissions: nightfallclock.clock (everyone, for /clock) and nightfallclock.selftest (operators, for /clock selftest, which prints what the clock reads right now).

Settings

plugins/NightfallClock/config.yml is written on the first start, and read when the server starts. Each setting switches a part off for everyone:

Good to know

• Needs Paper 26.3 and Java 25. Not tested on Folia.
• The action bar is shared with any other plugin that writes there, so the clock may take turns with their text.
• A player who also runs the Nightfall Clock mod sees both clocks; /clock turns the plugin's off for them. A later version may let the mod step aside.
• The countdown is timed for clear weather; in rain the sky darkens a little sooner.
• Source and issues are on GitHub. MIT licence.

I kept getting caught out by the dark, halfway through a build or a long way from home, so I made a clock that sits where I'd glance anyway. Found a bug or have an idea? Open an issue on GitHub.