Windows 7: Customize How the Date is Displayed in the System Tray

Contributor Icon Contributed by Rob Rogers  
Tag Icon Tagged: Microsoft Windows 7  

By default the Windows 7 taskbar uses large icons, which makes for a bigger taskbar. This easily allows not only the time to show in the system tray, but the date as well. You can customize how the date is displayed and what information it will show.

1. Go to the Control Panel.

2. Select Clock, Language, and Region.

3. Select Region and Language.

4. Click the Additional settings button.

5. Select the Date tab.

6. Go to the Date formats section. Use the Short date dropdown to select the desired display. Click the Apply button to view the results.

If you don’t see what you want, you can add your own by placing your cursor on the dropdown and typing.

You will need to keep these notations in mind:

d, dd are for displaying the date

ddd, dddd are for displaying the day of the week

M, MM, MMM, MMMM are for displaying the month

yy, yyyy are for displaying the year.

By using these notations and seperators such as hyphens, commas, periods, etc. you can customize your date to display in a number of ways.

For example:
ddd MM/dd/yy

will make your date look like this:

 

15 Comments -


  1. Anonymous said on May 13, 2009

    Good tip. I’ve had a double-sized Taskbar for years with XP. My time and date settings are like this:

    HH:mm:ss
    dd.MMM.yyyy

    So I get:

    16:13
    Wednesday
    13.May.2009

  2. fede_pyro said on May 21, 2009

    maybe you can help me, when i right-click a folder the otpion customize (like win xp and vista) it’s missing, so i cannot change the icon of the folder, did something bad in the installation or just bad luck with the .iso of the win 7

  3. MG said on February 4, 2010

    WHAT IF U DON’T WANT TO SEE THE DATE IN THE TASKBAR?

  4. MG said on February 4, 2010

    WHAT IF U DON’T WANT TO SEE THE DATE AT ALL?

  5. Tigger said on April 2, 2010

    If in Taskbar and Start Menu Properties, on the Taskbar tab, there is a check mark in Use Small icons, the date will no longer be shown.

  6. VHall said on May 20, 2010

    This didn’t work. Still only have the time in the system tray! I really want the date to show.

  7. Kc27315 said on July 11, 2010

    wow, that worked great for me! Thank you Sooooo much!!!!!!!!!!!

  8. Andy said on August 12, 2010

    VHall, you need to use large icons on the taskbar. Right-click on the taskbar and clear the “use small icons” checkbox.

  9. ValerieLHall said on August 13, 2010

    Andy: You are amazing! Thank you for taking the time to pass this info on to me. I love it! So simple and yet a huge difference! Thank you!

  10. sam2095 said on August 23, 2010

    If you really want small icons (I do) then bear in mind that if you hover over the clock you will see the date.

  11. Sugardalat said on September 7, 2010

    What if I want to show the date while using small icon?

  12. Sugardalat said on September 7, 2010

    how can I show the date while using the small icon? I need to use the small icon and need to see the date…

  13. crusty said on January 4, 2011

    Didn’t work. I’m using Windows7. Error message; ‘characters are invalid. try using different characters’

  14. crusty said on January 4, 2011

    Figured it out. Don’t do it under ‘additional settings’. Just type in custom date format first place you see ’short date’

  15. friedrice said on March 18, 2011

    How can i change the background color just where the date/time are displayed or can I choose a color for the date/time?

 

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL

Leave a comment -