User profile for user: Sanderadio
Sanderadio Author
User level: Level 1
15 points

macOS Ventura 13.0 - Language Region - Date Format

This morning when I started working with macOS Ventura 13.0 I noticed to my surprise that the Date Format only has two options: 8/29/22 or 2022-08-29. But I like my dates to be shown as 08/29/2022 (including zeros). I found out that you'll have to edit ~/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences.plist (this is a hidden file) and add this: 


<key>AppleICUDateFormatStrings</key>
	<dict>
		<key>1</key>
		<string>MM/dd/y</string>
	</dict>


Of course you can customize the MM/dd/y part. Wanted to share this for people with the same question.

iMac

Posted on Oct 25, 2022 6:40 AM

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User profile for user: KMPeterson
KMPeterson
User level: Level 1
14 points

Posted on Oct 28, 2022 1:57 PM

This got me started, many thanks!


This can be performed from the command line, too, which is... easier:


defaults write NSGlobalDomain AppleICUDateFormatStrings -dict-add "1" "MM/dd/y"


The dict indices, 1 through 4 correspond to the four "lengths" of dates, from short to whatever is longest. Easiest thing to do if you can find another macOS box that you'd used previously (still on macOS 12) is to run

defaults find AppleICU

which will list out the names and related values in place on that machine (or like, get on and set things up the way you want, and then run that command to get the configuration.


My configuration is, btw:

defaults write NSGlobalDomain AppleICUDateFormatStrings -dict-add "1" "ddMMMyy"
defaults write NSGlobalDomain AppleICUDateFormatStrings -dict-add "2" "d MMM yy"
defaults write NSGlobalDomain AppleICUDateFormatStrings -dict-add "3" "dd MMMM y"
defaults write NSGlobalDomain AppleICUDateFormatStrings -dict-add "4" "EEEE, d MMMM y"


And I have some for time, as well.


Hope this helps!



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User profile for user: RobertCailliau
RobertCailliau
User level: Level 1
19 points

Jan 10, 2023 12:02 AM in response to Sanderadio

Thanks, KMPeterson.

I just started experimenting with Ventura (on an external bootable disk, before doing an irreversible installation).

I noticed that the formats can no longer be set separately. This happened before ("Tiger" I think) and was a pain for two years.

I want to change the number format: I want ' (single quote) for thousands and . (dot) for decimal. But I also want English, metric, euros, YYYY-MM-DD, etc.

So I suppose there must be settings for that too, as you pointed out.

I just hope that whoever had the idea to again take some function away, will reverse that.

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User profile for user: RobertCailliau
RobertCailliau
User level: Level 1
19 points

Jan 10, 2023 4:31 AM in response to léonie

Yes, I will do this.

I have already done it the first time, many years ago.

It seems there is an irrepressible tendency at Apple to take away useful functions, perhaps just because they have difficulty imagining international situations (*) or because it's not beautiful enough.

Sigh.

R.C.


(* I live a few km from the Swiss border, but in France. I do all my work in English, and I set the preferences to EnglishUK, euros, metric, Monday as start of week, date as YYYY-MM-DD, 24h clock, ºC, and use the Swiss number format with ' for thousands and . for decimals because it is unambiguous. It's all no problem in Windows...)

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macOS Ventura 13.0 - Language Region - Date Format

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