com.android.deskclock Copy

This is the AOSP Clock app, labelled "Clock" on almost every device in our sample. It is the open-source clock that ships in the Android platform source as packages/apps/DeskClock, and it provides alarms, timers, a stopwatch, a world clock and the analogue and digital clock widgets. Its manifest at the Android 16 tag declares the package com.android.deskclock, a launcher entry, and a handler for the android.provider.AlarmClock API actions, so where it is the handler for those actions it is what answers when another app or an assistant asks the system to set or dismiss an alarm, show alarms or start a timer. It is not the same app as Google's Clock, com.google.android.deskclock, which is documented separately on this site. This one is built into the system image rather than updated through Play: in our sample no observation is Play eligible, the signing key differs from device to device (including the framework keys of vivo, Xiaomi and ITEL, a Google-signed build and the QEMU emulator key), and the recorded version names run from 8.1.0 up to vendor numbering such as 13.64.0. In other words most OEMs rebuild it, and several reskin it, so the look and the feature set vary even though the package name does not. The two clocks rarely sit side by side: of the 28 devices in our sample carrying this package and the 76 carrying Google's Clock, only one device recorded both, so a device generally ships one or the other. Version note, and it matters here. The AOSP project itself is no longer actively developed. The README on the current main branch states that the app is not actively supported, that the source is available only as a reference, and that the project will be removed from the source manifest at some point in future. The source is still present in current release tags, so devices continue to ship builds of it, but do not read its presence as evidence of an actively maintained upstream. Our sample sees the package on API levels 27 to 36, and no change of role at a particular Android version was found. For Android Enterprise, EMM and kiosk use it has no enrolment or policy role. Whether it matters on a given device depends on what else is installed: where nothing else handles the AlarmClock actions, disabling it removes alarm and timer handling and anything that fires those intents will have no handler, so check the device before acting. Note also that Google's Workspace guidance for company-owned devices lists com.google.android.deskclock among the critical system apps an administrator cannot disallow, but does not list com.android.deskclock, so this variant can be blocked from an admin console where the Google app cannot. Treat it with caution rather than disabling it by default.

• platform/packages/apps/DeskClock - Git at Google →
• DeskClock README, main branch - Android (packages/apps/DeskClock) →
• DeskClock AndroidManifest.xml, Android 16 source - Android (packages/apps/DeskClock) →
• AlarmClock - Android Developers →
• Manage system apps on company-owned mobile devices - Google Workspace Admin Help →
• Package provenance for com.android.deskclock - Android System App Database →
• Package provenance for com.google.android.deskclock - Android System App Database →

• Re-signed by each device maker with its own platform key - 6 different certificates appear across 5 device makers in our sample. That is the signature of a stock AOSP/system package every OEM builds and signs itself, not a single maker's or a third party's preinstall. These are platform-level keys: they also sign the Android framework itself.
• Its largest observed manifest declares 52 permissions: 2 runtime (user-granted), 16 signature or system-level, 9 install-time and 25 vendor or uncatalogued.
• APK size ranges from 3.6 MB to 24.3 MB across the reporting device profiles, so the build differs substantially between them.