Morph paints a subtle, color-changing border around your entire screen based on your calendar. No alarms. No pop-ups. Just color in your peripheral vision—the way time-blind brains understand time best.
Free & open source · GPL-3.0 · No account required
If you have ADHD, autism, or just a packed calendar—you already know. Traditional solutions all share the same fatal flaw: they demand your attention. When you're deep in flow state, that's a tax you can't afford.
A jarring sound destroys 23 minutes of focused work. You spend half the day recovering from interruptions, not from the meeting itself.
You trained yourself to ignore them. Now every "15 minute warning" slides by unnoticed while you're 40 paragraphs into a document.
Clocks and countdown timers only work if you remember to look. For time-blind brains, "just check the clock" is the advice that never works.
The Timeqube is a $110 LED cube that sits on your desk and changes color over time. Therapists and ADHD coaches love it. The research behind it is real. But it costs $110, can't connect to your calendar, can't travel with your laptop, and only works for one session at a time. Morph is free software that does everything it does—and more.
Colors transition smoothly over seconds—never a jarring jump. Your brain absorbs the shift in peripheral vision without ever needing to check the clock.
Real research backs ambient color as a time cue. The Timeqube team ran an EU-funded R&D project. We built on their findings.
The human visual system processes color before shape or text. A green-to-amber shift reaches your brain faster and more gently than any notification banner ever could.
Timeqube's EU-funded study found ambient peripheral color produces time awareness without stress. Your brain registers the shift without conscious effort or cortisol spike.
Visual timers are a clinically recommended intervention for ADHD time blindness. The same dopamine regulation systems that struggle with time perception respond well to ambient environmental cues.
Connect Google Calendar or Microsoft 365. Morph pulls your events automatically and updates the border in real time. Apple Calendar support is on the roadmap.
No calendar? No problem. One-click Pomodoro (25 min), short break, long break, and focus hour presets from your menu bar. Works great for freelancers and solo workers.
The default palette avoids red entirely, ending at purple instead of crimson. An "Ocean" palette using blue-to-orange is available for red-green colorblind users.
All calendar data stays on your machine. No analytics, no telemetry, no accounts. Your schedule is yours alone. Built with Rust and Tauri for native-level security.
Lives in your system tray—no window to manage, no dock icon cluttering your screen. Click to adjust settings or start a manual timer, then it disappears again.
Adjust border thickness, opacity, color palette, and which monitor gets the border. Dial it down to barely perceptible or make it vivid—your brain, your settings.
The Timeqube is a solid product. But software can do more—and reach everyone who needs it.
| Feature | Morph | Timeqube |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | $110 |
| Calendar integration | ✓ Google + Microsoft 365 | — Manual only |
| Travels with your laptop | ✓ Always there | ✕ Physical device |
| Back-to-back meetings | ✓ Automatic | ✕ Manual reset |
| Colorblind palette | ✓ Ocean mode | — Fixed colors |
| Open source | ✓ GPL-3.0 | ✕ Proprietary |
| Multi-monitor | ✓ Choose any monitor | ● Put it wherever |
| No assembly/charging | ✓ | — Needs USB power |
Morph is useful any time you need to track time without breaking concentration.
Morph is and will remain free and open source under GPL-3.0. If it helps you, consider a tip to support development.
The original ambient time awareness device. Well-researched concept, limited by being physical hardware.
The software equivalent—with calendar sync, portability, and features that hardware can't match.
Morph will be free and open source on release. Join the waitlist to be notified first.
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