Nightfall Clock

A HUD clock that warns you before nightfall. The day and time sit just above your hotbar, and an hour before dark it tells you: "The sun's getting real low". It reads where the sun really is, so it stays right even on packs with longer days.

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.

What you see

A line of text just above your hearts and hunger: "Day 4 · 2:35 PM". It turns gold at 6:00 PM and stays gold until night falls.

At 6:00 PM that line reads "The sun's getting real low" for a few seconds, then goes back to the time. It only happens when dusk arrives as you play, not when you sleep or jump ahead with /time set (a jump of just a few minutes still counts as playing through it).

Then the clock counts down to dark: "Day 4 · 6:42 PM · dark in 24s". It's counting to the moment it's dark enough for monsters to spawn outside, in real seconds, so you know whether there's time to make it home. It's timed from how fast the sky is really getting darker, so it stays right on longer days and in rain.

When thunder starts, the line reads "Storm's rolling in" for a few seconds. Monsters can spawn in daylight during a thunderstorm, so it's a second kind of nightfall.

The clock shares its spot politely. When something else needs that space (the name of the item you just switched to, a message in the action bar, or recent chat), the clock steps aside and fades back in once it's gone. If a server keeps its own text in the action bar all the time, the clock shows alongside it instead of staying hidden.

It hides with the rest of the HUD when you press F1.

In the Nether and the End, which have no day of their own, the clock shows the Overworld's: "Overworld: Day 4 · 9:12 PM". So you know whether it's night before you step back through the portal.

Right on longer days

Most clocks divide the day's ticks into 24 equal hours. That works for vanilla, but packs and datapacks that make days longer, or stretch the daylight more than the night, throw them off: "6:00 PM" can arrive while it's still bright, or after dark.

Nightfall Clock reads the time from where the sun actually is, the same way Minecraft's own clock item does. However long the day is, 6:00 PM is when the sun is where it sits at 6:00 PM in vanilla.

Settings

On Fabric, with Mod Menu installed, open Mods, pick Nightfall Clock and click the settings button. On NeoForge and Forge, open Mods, pick Nightfall Clock and click Config. Changes show straight away.

• Clock: on or off.
• Dusk Warning: on or off.
• Countdown to Dark: on or off.
• Storm Warning: on or off.
• Overworld Time: the Overworld's time in the Nether and the End, on or off.
• Position: above the hotbar, or in any corner of the screen. (Minimaps and some HUD mods use the top corners; pick one they don't.)
• Time Format: 12-hour (6:00 PM), 24-hour (18:00), or Auto, which follows your computer's region settings.

The same settings are also in config/nightfallclock.properties.

If you play with Text Background set to Everywhere (Options, Accessibility), the clock gets the same dark box behind it as the rest of the game's text.

Good to know

• It's client-side only. It works on any server, and the server doesn't need it.
• The day number changes at 6:00 AM, the way Minecraft counts days, so 2:00 AM still belongs to the day before.

Requirements

The countdown to dark, the storm warning and the Overworld's time in the Nether are on 26.2, 26.3 and 1.21.1; the 1.20.1 file has the clock and the dusk warning.

Pick the file for your version and loader in the Files tab. Optional on Fabric: Mod Menu, for the settings screen; on NeoForge and Forge, the settings are on the Mods screen's Config button.

About this mod

I made this for my own modded playthroughs and am sharing it in case it helps others. I built it with help from Claude, an AI assistant. The source is on GitHub under the MIT License, so you're welcome to read it, fork it or include it in a modpack.

Found a bug or have an idea? Tell me on GitHub.

More of my mods, in short videos: youtube.com/@gabmaybelle