Sonoma Calendar date format

I think I have a relatively good workaround now. Go to System Settings > General > Language & Region, and set the following:

Preferred Languages: English (Canada) - Primary

Region: Paraguay

Date format: 2023-08-19

It' important that the Preferred Language is English (Canada) and not just English because this changes the date format to YYYY-MM-DD on many websites, including icloud.com > Calendar.

Another tidbit is that if you have an Apple Numbers document containing cells that have the Data Format: Currency with Currency: Canadian Dollar, and you want to display those cells as $123 and not CA$123, you have to go to Numbers > File > Advanced > Language & Region... and change the Language from System - English to English and the Region from Paraguay to Canada.

This appears to have been fixed in MacOS 14.4 (23E214), released today. Of course, there is no mention in the release notes, and my bug (FB13468535) remains open, with “recent similar reports: none”, and not a single acknowledgement or reply.

Yes, I forgot to mention that setting Region: Paraguay is what changes the date format to YYYY-MM-DD in any macOS app that uses the native date picker (i.e. NSDatePicker), for example when you click to select a date in macOS Calendar or Reminders. Using Region: Sri Lanka also works for that purpose.

Also noticed this. It appears the issue is limited to the date picker widget — other aspects of date formatting (e.g. printing out dates) work correctly. But it will affect every app that uses the standard date picker widget; e.g. I'm seeing the issue in Fantastical as well.

Specifically:

1. The NSDatePicker widget does not respect the date format preference you select in System Settings. The format it uses is determined only by the language and region you've selected. (This appears to not be a new limitation — I tested on macOS 13 and it also doesn't change depending on the preference in that version, either.) Filed this as FB13221469.
2. The format NSDatePicker uses for Canada has changed to the US-style "M/d/y" format, instead of the "Y-MM-dd" format that was previously used for Canada. However, the default format that Apple uses for dates for Canada is still "Y-MM-dd" everywhere else, so ... they should switch it back for NSDatePicker to be consistent (and, arguably, more correct). Filed this as FB13221502.

Calendar and Reminders in macOS 13 and earlier did NOT respect the Date Format in the Language & Region settings. The reason you saw YYYY-MM-DD in macOS 13 and earlier Calendar and Reminders was because that was the date format Apple had decided to associate with Canada as Region in the Language & Region settings. In macOS 14 Apple has associated the date format MM/DD/YYYY with Canada as Region in the Language & Region settings. I'm not Canadian but have always used Canada as the Region exactly because it was the only one that was associated with the ISO 8601 date format.

I see that there is considerable confusion here on this subject. While System Settings (General) does accept and retain the ISO 8601 format (yyyy-mm-dd), and, in fact defaults to that format when Canada is the selected Region (or remembers what I had previously set), something else is in play that forces several applications, Apple and non-Apple, not to respect that chosen format. The developer of one of my apps seemed to find the flaw in Sonoma and republished the app to workaround the flaw.

The best that anyone can do at this point is to submit Feedback to Apple, as I have done explaining that I am holding off my upcoming purchases of new products until Sonoma is cleared up. Sonoma has numerous bugs in other functions as well. One example is that when I select a previously sent email, and edit the content, keyboard input is ignored where old text was deleted. Similar complaints are found on various forums across the Internet.

Sonoma 14.1.1 on an M1 Mac mini. Previous operating systems (prior to Sonoma) work just fine. I regret updating this particular Mac.

I can't personally verify the specifics of Calendar, but if @Westacular knows what he/she's talking about (and it sure seems like it), his/her first bullet point says that the reason Calendar doesn't respect the Date Format setting is because it uses `NSDatePicker`, which presumably has never respected the Date Format setting. Only people inside Apple know why they have implented their API in this way.

I don't have a workaround. I tried a bunch of different regions, but none of them fixed the issue. But I hope Apple accepts the bug report @Westacular mentions in his/her second bullet point for changing the date format `NSDatePicker` uses for Canada region back to the way it was in macOS 13 and earlier.

Adam wrote " I'm guessing it's getting the latter format from my region (Canada)." The standard date format in Canada is ISO 8601, i.e. yyyy-mm-dd, and that has been the standard that macOS Region Canada has been for recent (last few decades or more?) macOS versions prior to Sonoma.

Sonoma is well mucked up on the date format. Most apps that have a date component is now broken.

You're right, the selection in System Settings does not apply in the date picker. I see the same thing you do. Someone at Apple modified Calendar to not follow System Settings, which should not be too hard to correct, hopefully in the next update.

Called Apple Support. The second level technician recognized that there is a problem. He stated that he was adding my coordinates to a list of people affected by this and that (presumably and hopefully) we would be advised of an update to correct the problem.

By the way, in addition to Calendar, there are several other apps affected; among them MacJournal.

"In macOS 14 Apple has associated the date format MM/DD/YYYY with Canada as Region in the Language & Region settings."

(self) Censored comment.

(Sigh...)