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suggested edit to hint: Tip — Date and Time in the Menu Bar

The user tip, located here, massively overcomplicates the procedure for showing the date and time in the menu bar.

The simpler way is to do:

1. Click >System Preferences...>International>Formats.
2. Next to "Dates", click the "Customize" button.
3. Arrange the date the way you want it to appear in the menu bar (don't worry about time at this point).
4. Select everything in the date format box and copy it (⌘C).
5. Next to "Times", click the "Customize" button.
6. Select the "Medium" format.
7. Paste the time format into the box (⌘V), and customize it to appear as you wish.
8. Click OK.

That's it. No Terminal, nothing complicated.

17" iMac 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 2.5GB RAM 160GB hard drive, Mac OS X (10.5.5), iPod 5th gen (with video) 30GB.

Posted on Nov 5, 2008 3:48 PM

Reply
6 replies

Nov 6, 2008 1:54 PM in response to joshz

Hi joshz,

Looks good. At first I was concerned that modifying the time format would affect how it appears in Mail, the Finder and such.

After testing with Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5, I find the "Medium" format you mention only seems to affect the Menu Bar Clock. The "Short" format affects Mail and Finder views.

The other thing to note is the Date and Time Menu Bar Clock settings. It is easy to have the Day of the Week duplicated for example, and that is where you want to display the seconds if desired.

Let's get some more input on this.

Thanks,
Nubz N.

Jun 16, 2011 8:41 AM in response to joshz

Any chance you figured out how to do this for Snow Leopard?


I did this before, and when i migrated i could see that the change i made in Tiger, carried over, (that is there was a date in my medium clock setting) but it doesn't show in the clock in my menu bar...


Is there a fix?


Maybe Lion will bring this back... or better still offer the ability to put what we want with less complication?

suggested edit to hint: Tip — Date and Time in the Menu Bar

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