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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-11T22:41:46+00:00

I am trying to make an animated clock using Swing in Java. The picture

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I am trying to make an animated clock using Swing in Java. The picture I have posted is a basic idea of what I am looking for. In the end I hope to have the arrow be stationary and the numbers move to indicate the hour, plus I want to have a nested circle with 60 boxes doing the same. I’m not looking for code on how to do this just some tips on how I should get started, links to good tutorials, that kind of thing. Thanks.

clock

edit: I for got to mention that I’m not actually making a clock, its just the simplest way to explain the premise of what I’m trying to accomplish, to the more general the answers the better.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You could draw it on a JPanel by overriding the paintComponent method.

    Use a Timer to tick every second to redraw the clock. The timer fires ActionEvents which your panel could listen for.

    As for drawing, the center of the boxes with the numbers can be calculated with a bit of trigonometry. For the hour boxes: x = sin(hour / 12 * 2 * pi) and y = cos(hour / 12 * 2 * pi). For the minute boxes: x = sin(minute / 60 * 2 * pi) and y = cos(minute / 60 * 2 * pi). These will be relative to the center of the clock and will need to be multiplied by some constant. Actually, those equations might not be quite right, but the way to do it is something like that.

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