Ambient · golden hour
Sunset Clock
A sun sinking into the sea under a banded orange sky, with clouds drifting across it. Warm, slow and easy to leave on into the evening.
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Press F for full screen. Motion pauses automatically if your system asks for reduced motion.
Golden hour
Why Sunsets Look the Way They Do
The Light Travels Further
Near the horizon, sunlight passes through far more atmosphere than at noon. Blue and violet scatter away along that longer path, leaving the reds and oranges to reach your eye. It is the same scattering that makes the midday sky blue, just seen from the other end.
Clouds Make It Better
A completely clear sunset is often dull. Clouds catch light from below after the sun has dropped past the horizon, which is what produces the deep pinks and purples people actually remember.
Warm Light Late in the Day
This scene is dominated by orange and red, the wavelengths least likely to interfere with melatonin. As evening screen content goes it is among the gentler options here.
Barely Anything Moves
The sun drifts over twenty-six seconds and the clouds cross over a minute or more. There is nothing quick enough to catch your eye, which makes it usable beside work.
Under the hood
How This Scene Is Built
The sky is a five-stop gradient, the sun a radial one, and the reflection a repeating stripe pattern that stretches and fades. The clouds are simple rounded bars drifting at different speeds and opacities.
For warmth without a scene, the night light gives you a plain amber panel with a brightness slider, which is the better choice if you actually want the screen as a light source.
Answers
Sunset Background Questions
Why are sunsets red?
Because low sunlight travels a much longer path through the atmosphere, and the short blue wavelengths scatter out of it along the way. What is left by the time it reaches you is the red and orange end.
Is this good for evening screen use?
Better than most. It is heavily weighted towards warm colours with very little blue, so it interferes less with melatonin than a bright or cool scene. Lowering your display brightness still helps more than changing scene.
Does it show the real time of sunset?
No, it is a fixed scene rather than a simulation of your local sky. The clock in front of it is your real local time.
Why does so little move?
Deliberately. This one is designed to sit beside work, where anything fast in your peripheral vision is a distraction rather than a background.
Will it look right on an ultrawide monitor?
Yes. Everything is built from proportional gradients rather than a fixed image, so it stretches cleanly to any aspect ratio.