Snow Crystal

A frosty winter snowflake watch face for Wear OS. One snow crystal, photographed the way a snow-crystal physicist photographs one - lit from the side against a black plate, so every edge and every internal facet blazes white - and magnified until it fills your watch.

A snow crystal is six-fold symmetric, and that is what makes it a dial. One arm points straight up, so the six arms fall on 12, 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10, and a chip of frost sits beyond each arm's tip for the hour it points at. The hands turn from the crystal's own middle plate.

Three crystals, three habits

• Stellar dendrite: long arms crowded with side branches.
• Fernlike dendrite: branches that branch again, like a frond of ice.
• Sectored plate: flat hexagonal plates with straight edges, cut like glass.

Three lights

The colour of the light coming up through the ice, as a photographer changes the light under the slide: icy white, deep blue, or the green of an aurora.

Made to be read

• Hands cut as ice prisms: a ridge down the middle, one facet to the light and one turned away, and a channel of packed frost inside that reads against the crystal's own white.
• Twelve hour marks, small hexagons of real frost.
• Steps, unread notifications and battery in the lanes between the arms, where the field stays black on every crystal - each beside the icon of the data it holds.
• The weekday and the date at 3 o'clock, in an alphabet that grows its own ice needles.

One moment, and nothing else

On the hour, a cold spark runs out along the six arms and goes out. Nothing else on this face moves but the hands, so it is easy on the battery.

Make it yours

• Crystal: stellar, fernlike or sectored plate.
• Light: icy white, deep blue or aurora.
• Seconds hand: on by default; switch it off to save battery.
• Three complications.

Made for winter

• A frosty winter look for the snowy months, from the first frost to the thaw.
• Not a Christmas face: it looks right all winter long.

To customize, touch and hold the watch face, then tap Customize.

Works on Wear OS 6 or later, such as Galaxy Watch models updated to One UI 8 Watch and Pixel Watch. Made in Watch Face Format: nothing to install on your phone, no permissions, no data collected.

Part of Tempus Arcanum, a collection of animated watch faces.