App Preview App Preview Made using PyQt5

A minimal desktop digital clock built with PyQt5, featuring a custom 7-segment-style font, dynamic layout, light and dark mode (based on current time), and robust exception handling. This project demonstrates modular GUI programming, file-based logging, and safe resource loading.

• Live digital clock updating every second
• Custom digital font (DS-DIGIT.TTF) applied using Qt's font database
• Exception-safe font loading with automatic fallback to the system font
• Auto-generated log files with detailed error tracebacks (timestamped)
• Clean GUI with:
  • Centered layout
  • HSL color styling
  • Dark background for high contrast

PythonDigitalClock/
├── main.py # Entry point – sets up logging and launches the app
├── digitalClock.py # Contains the DigitalClock widget (UI + logic)
├── logConfig.py # Handles timestamped log file setup
├── setup.py # Handles the setup to package the app (unrelated to the app's logic)
├── fonts/
│ └── ds_digital/
│ └── DS-DIGIT.TTF # Custom font file
├── logs/ # Automatically created log files for each run
└── README.md # You're here :)

The clock uses a custom font (DS-DIGIT.TTF) to mimic a digital display. Font loading is handled through QFontDatabase. If the font fails to load (e.g., missing, corrupt, unreadable), the program:

• Logs the error to a timestamped file (inside /logs)
• Falls back to a default system font
• Keeps the application running safely

• Logs are saved to /logs/clock_YYYY-MM-DD_HH-MM-SS.log
• Only errors and critical issues are logged
• Output is sent to both:
  • A file for persistent inspection
  • The console for real-time debugging

• Python 3.7+
• PyQt5

Install dependencies with:

pip install PyQt5

Make sure you're in the root folder:

python main.py

A new log file will be created automatically in the logs/ folder each time you run the app.

The custom font is located at:

fonts/ds_digital/DS-DIGIT.TTF

You can replace it with any .ttf file of your choice by modifying the path inside load_font().

Exception types handled during font loading:

• FileNotFoundError – if the font file is missing
• IndexError – if no font families are returned after loading
• RuntimeError – raised manually when font registration fails
• OSError – if the file is corrupted or locked

These are caught gracefully and logged via Python’s logging module.

You can turn this project into a native macOS .app using py2app. Follow the steps below:

Use Python 3.11 — py2app is not compatible with Python 3.13+ as of now.

# Install Python 3.11 via Homebrew (if needed)
brew install python@3.11
# Create and activate a virtual environment
python3.11 -m venv venv311
source venv311/bin/activate
# Install dependencies
pip install pyqt5 py2app

python3 setup.py py2app

This will create a standalone app in the dist/ folder:

dist/
└── main.app

To run it:

open dist/main.app

To run it from the terminal and see logs:

./dist/main.app/Contents/MacOS/main

The custom font is bundled inside the app at:

main.app/Contents/Resources/fonts/ds_digital/DS-DIGIT.TTF

The load_font() method in the code auto-detects whether the app is running in a bundle and adjusts the font path accordingly.

If the app fails to launch due to security restrictions, run:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine dist/main.app

This removes the quarantine flags and allows unsigned apps to run.

Built by @fgatto13. Cleanly written and modularized to demonstrate PyQt5 best practices.

This project is based on a PyQt5 digital clock tutorial originally created by BroCode.

The original tutorial served as a foundation for building a minimal clock GUI.
This version expands upon it with:

• Exception-safe font handling
• Robust logging to timestamped files
• Modular project structure (main.py, digitalClock.py, logConfig.py)
• Best practices for maintainability and error traceability

These enhancements aim to demonstrate real-world engineering standards, especially around resilience and observability.