How To: Display Date in OS X Menu Bar

While getting things settled down on my MacBook it became apparent that I did not want to rely on the calendar widget to find out the numeric date. I simply wanted to view the date alongside the time in the menu bar. Unfortunately this is not an option in OS X. However, with a slight of hand, you too can easily display the date in the OS X menu bar without the need of additional applications.

1) Open System Preferences by following Apple » System Preferences. 2) Under the Personal section, click on International. 3) Select the Formats tab and click on Customize under Dates.
4) OS X does not offer the date options under the Times section, so we can create the format we like in Dates, copy it, and paste it in the portion for customizing time. Select the dates format you want to start out with, such as Medium or Long and drag items from Date Elements to get your favored format. Highlight and copy this, then click Cancel. 5) Click Customize under the Times section. Select Medium from the drop-down menu and paste what you had copied in step 4 where you want it to appear.

Date in Menu Bar

6) Click OK and glance at your menu bar to see the new format. You can go back and add spaces or other characters between elements as needed.

Date in Menu Bar
The final product.

7) You can further modify this by setting options in System Preferences » Date & Time » Clock. Options such as Show the day of the week and Show AM/PM are most likely what you would be interested in changing.

Note: This only works on OS X.4 Tiger and I have been using it for almost a year, on all of my macs and it has worked fine.