Date format in Finder

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Date format in Finder

Swedish Leopard 10.5.2

In the Finder's list view, is it possible to alter the date format shown? In the system settings, there are 4 different date strings available to alter (I don't want to start by altering them if I don't need to). Loosely translated from Swedish, they are called "Short", "Normal", "Long" and "Full".

Finder displays the "Full" date format, followed by the time. I would like to change this to display the "Short" date format instead. Is this possible somehow? I know I can turn off showing dates as "Yesterday" and such, but that is NOT what I'm after. I want to display the date as set by the "Short" date format in the system settings.

Is this possible to somehow achieve with some "defaults write" command in the terminal? I am new to OS X, but not afraid to fiddle with things like this. 🙂

Thanks for any response on this.

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.2), 8-core @ 3.2GHz, 4GB memory

Posted on Mar 14, 2008 3:33 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

R C-R

Level 6

17,866 points

Mar 14, 2008 4:29 AM in response to Bornhall

I'm not sure this is what you are after, but for me (using the default U.S. settings) Finder displays the "Full" date only if the column is wide enough for that. As the date column is narrowed, it progressively displays the more abbreviated formats, with the "Short" form displayed at its narrowest settings.

I usually size the column just large enough to show the short form date + time.

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Answer 2

bhh48

Level 1

60 points

Mar 14, 2008 8:34 AM in response to Bornhall

There are four different date formats in International, System preferences.
The Finder seems to use all of these depending on the width of the time column.
I myself don't like the appearance of the date and time changing with the width of a column.
In particular I don't like the date with names for months; it's annoying for comparison.

The only way to always get the same date/time in list view of the Finder is to make all date formats
(short,medium,long,full) the same. That's what I have done and now I have what I want.
It won't win a beauty contest.

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