Comments on: How To: Display Date in OS X Menu Bar

By: echo

echo — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 04:14:07 +0000

Perfect, this was a long term “gripe”… Hitting F12 to see the dashboard 20 times a day to confirm the numerical date. THANKS!!!

By: Bernard

Bernard — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 09:46:09 +0000

Nice, thanks.

By: M PAUL

M PAUL — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 15:24:01 +0000

Thanks

By: M PAUL

M PAUL — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 15:22:50 +0000

Works great when you copy the date’s format in medium and copy it in the exact format given in the picture!!!

By: Waldorf

Waldorf — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 21:24:58 +0000

Just a quick update to this great post that helped me out in the Tiger days.

In Snow Leopard, you can just click “Show date” in the clock preferences now.

By: jack connolly

jack connolly — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 15:35:34 +0000

I learned UNIX on SunOS and used X Windows a lot. On all of my Suns I always ran xclock and I was really happy to see it is part of my 10.5 OSX install (I did make sure I installed X Windows). I just typed xclock -d (for a digital clock) and it pops a nice little clock on my desktop for me. You can run the command from a terminal session by putting it in the background (xclock -d &) or you can customize your XWindows application with the command. UNIX and XWindows isn’t for everyone, but I’ve been a UNIX admin since 1991 and my apologies if it doesn’t work for you.

By: Matt Beck

Matt Beck — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 17:13:10 +0000

most useful tip I’ve seen in months, thanks!

By: Marcus Nicke

Marcus Nicke — Fri, 08 May 2009 18:02:52 +0000

I can’t believe this has been buggy since 2006 and I am suffering the problem on a brand new MacBook in 2009. with 10.5.6. Come on Apple what are you doing!

You need to follow the instructions at the top of the page plus Paul’s additional instructions in this section. Chris is also correct, you can leave all the other fields (short, medium etc) blank, simply fill in the format you want in the “long” option under time and that is what will appear.

Thanks Paul-this is much better than hovering BUT come on Apple, three years to fix a bug like this is too long.

By: john g

john g — Fri, 01 May 2009 19:46:14 +0000

i know this will just cause a firestorm of partisan comments, but i have been annoyed for about a year that i couldn’t get my mac to display the date on the top bar. this is of course easy to do on a PC and took me about 1 minute. but on my mac, it was seemingly impossible. so finally one day i had enough time to type in a search on the net, and i turned up a few hits. i tried following the first one, but it didn’t get me all the way there. then i followed the second, which was on this page. i followed this page and finally got my mac to show me the date after maybe 10 or 15 minutes. now i have what i wanted.

the discussions on both pages show that many people find this limitation annoying. but somehow, apple users find this arcane process affirms that apple/mac is wonderful. the mac interface is nice for many things, but it has its faults. i don’t understand why people can’t just admit that.

By: Chris Quenelle

Chris Quenelle — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 22:25:33 +0000

I had the same experience in Mac OS 10.5.6. I think the menu bar shows whatever is in the international formats settings under ‘times’ and under ‘long’. The sample output window shows a different choice (short/medium whatever) so the sample output in the date formats screen will not match what’s in the menu bar. I had the same bug with duplicated initial and final elements of the format string.

By: Blake

Blake — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 04:04:41 +0000

This was my problem… thanks!

By: Alex

Alex — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 23:52:25 +0000

Thanks for the help! Very simple, and it’s a lot nicer to be able to see the date without needing to click on the menu bar.

By: rick christy

rick christy — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 02:56:32 +0000

thanks for the menucalendarclock lead. exactly what i was looking for. the tip in this post didn’t work right for me either.

By: worldenz

worldenz — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 20:38:55 +0000

In some ways Apple works like a dream, in many other ways it is total crap, just like windows… and the real bonus is the total f.sc.st like adherance one company one product one licence no open source… look at the latest shuffle and try and get a 3rd party head set… So now to the point, I think the best proof that there is still SO much room for improvement is THIS silly issue… why on EARTH it is so difficult to just so the time and date together like any other computer, phone, microwave, heating system, car, etcetcetc shows…
Thank you so much for this hint…

By: Tom

Tom — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 22:00:24 +0000

Here’s the problem: this changes EVERY Apple time display, including the time in the iCal calendar app (in fact, it breaks iCal so it no longer can show times).

By: Hi

Hi — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 15:52:54 +0000

Also works for Leopard.

By: MO

MO — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 07:56:51 +0000

For those of us who just started using a MAC…this was a great post …it worked like a charm

By: abel

abel — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 21:10:53 +0000

Thanks! Although it has already been over two years since you posted this, it just helped me solve a minor annoyance after having bought an Apple laptop yesterday.

By: Huỳnh Duy

Huỳnh Duy — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 05:59:42 +0000

It works ! Greats !

By: Erik Neff

Erik Neff — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 20:12:55 +0000

Thanks for the help – this article was exactly what I wanted to do!

By: nathan

nathan — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 16:18:55 +0000

thanks! I’m new to macs–and the lack of a visible date was driving me crazy. this is a great tip! thanks, again!

By: Paulie140

Paulie140 — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 17:56:59 +0000

Awesome… Thank you!

By: Great trick for displaying the complete date in OSX | What did you mean ?

Great trick for displaying the complete date in OSX | What did you mean ? — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 10:57:32 +0000

[...] Stamatiou has a really useful blog post on how to get OSX to display the complete date in the menu bar. [...]

By: Show the date in the OS X Menu Bar « Ramblings

Show the date in the OS X Menu Bar « Ramblings — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 14:43:38 +0000

[...] How To: Display Date in OS X Menu Bar – PaulStamatiou.com 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. [...]

By: TwisterMc

TwisterMc — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 12:53:24 +0000

Excellent! Worked like a charm.