OS X Lion login screen clock format

Hey,

You can fix this by doing the following (I'm assuming you have English set as the langauge).

sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences AppleLocale "en_GB"

Hit return and reboot your computer and the clock on the login screen should be 24-hour format.

Cheers,

Kyle

Does anybody know if there is a way to specifically change the time format mask?

Any possibility of adding the date, too?

I also prefer the 24-hour clock format but my locale is not Great Britain, it's en_US, and I don't want my applications assuming that I should have everything set to the GB format.

Thanks,

-Daniel

Hi Kyle,

Sorry to say your fix does not work on my new iMac 27" with i7 CPU. The new value appears to be stored correctly in the .GlobalPreferences file when checking with defaults read AppleLocale but reboot does not change anything on the login screen.

Cheers,

VanPuffelen

Tell me exactly what you did --- what did you type? From beginning to end.

Thanks,

Kyle

Kyle, thank you. Your fix is working BUT... the value on Lock Screen (not Login Screen) is still with AM/PM. Do you know how to fix this part?

And does anybody know Apple aware about this issue?

Cheers, Kirill

I would suspect that either the root user needs to also have the AppleLocale set to en_UK or your user account needs it set. How did you fix the clock on your user account in the first place? did you just force it by modifying the local settings through the control panel? or did you just set it UK local settings in the control panel?

Probably something in there. I would just keep fiddling around with the GlobalPerferences file until you get it fixed.

This is what I typed in Terminal:

$ pwd /Users/steef $ sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences AppleLocale "en_NL" $ sudo defaults read /Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences AppleLocale en_NL $

After that I rebooted and checked whether the setting had been changed. It was not.

Hope this helps,

VanPuffelen

I would suspect it did not work because I don't think there is an en_NL langauge/localization...

Hmm, en_GB works but en_NL indeed does not. Strange because in other Unix such as Ubuntu it does. Anyway, I now leave it at en_GB. Thanks for your efforts.

Well, the last time I checked English isn't an offical langauge of the Netherlands so it kind of makes sense.

I'm assuming that the 24-hour clock is the preferred clock of the Netherlands, so why not set the localization settings to the Netherlands? If you're Dutch it probably makes sense. So if you want the Netherland's Dutch setting use nl_NL.

I assumed that the combination of language and country was just to indicate which system language you preferred and which internationalization settings you wished and that these could be combined arbitrarely. When logged in I have my system language set to English but all formats for dates, times and numbers set to Netherlands. Because this is possible I would expect that this combination of settings would also be available on the login screen.

Guys, I assume that we can try finding solution a long time, but 100% that it is Apple bug and we need to push it there hardly.

Cheers, Kirill

You can set the langauge using the string AppleLangauge....

Kay S. wrote:

Hit return and reboot your computer and the clock on the login screen should be 24-hour format.

There is no need to reboot.

Same fix but on /var/root/Library/Preferences/.GlobalPreferences takes care of that.