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This question already has an answer here:

Presently the date is showing as mmm dd hh:mm:ss. Is there any way that I can change it to as per my liking. For example : dd mmm, hh:mm:ss.

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marked as duplicate by wjandrea, Eric Carvalho, Charles Green, David Foerster, user364819 May 7 '17 at 9:28

This question has been asked before and already has an answer. If those answers do not fully address your question, please ask a new question.

  • Look at this link. – karthick87 May 20 '11 at 7:50
  • Nothing seems to have changed. I tried manually inserting the coded instruction as well as dconf editor. The date still shows up as Mon Apr 21, 21:24 in the upper right corner of the desktop and same in Thunderbird! – user272122 Apr 21 '14 at 19:26
  • I am surprised there is no simpler way of doing this like a small application added to System Settings where one can chose the date format with a click rather than having to go through such lengths! By the time I've read through the solution, I would have almost forgotten what my difficulty was in the first place! – Bumblebee001 Apr 21 '14 at 23:45
  • In 14.04, this answer worked for me: askubuntu.com/questions/237941/… – mcaleaa Jan 14 '15 at 10:20
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Terminal method

  • First you need to tell the indicator to use a custom format. To do so, run this from a gnome-terminal:

    gsettings set com.canonical.indicator.datetime time-format "'custom'"

  • Then you need to tell the indicator which format to use. This has to be done in a format understood by the strftime function. You can look it up here.

    For example, if you want the date/time to look like this: Fri, 20. May 08:25, the format string for it would be %a, %d. %h %H:%M. Now let's set it:

    gsettings set com.canonical.indicator.datetime custom-time-format "'%a, %d. %h  %H:%M'"

GUI method

You can also set those keys using a GUI called dconf-editor. It's part of the package dconf-tools, which you'd need to install first by running sudo apt-get install dconf-tools. Then open dconf-editor, navigate to com.canonical.indicator.datetime, and set the two keys.

screenshot of <code>dconf-editor</code> at <code>com.canonical.indicator.datetime</code> schema

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  • Worked great for me. I was just looking for this solution. Many many thanks htorque. – Arindom May 20 '11 at 12:59
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    I'm running 11.10, and I don't see any settings in com.canonical.indicator.datetime; is anyone else experiencing this? – Mike Partridge Nov 10 '11 at 3:02
  • @MikePartridge Nope, I'm still having the key and can set the date like described. Make sure you have the package indicator-datetime installed. – htorque Nov 10 '11 at 5:34
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    This answer still works for 16.04. I'd vote it again if I could. – amotzg Aug 16 '16 at 6:18
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    this dconf setting no longer exists in 18.04 – krock Jan 12 at 13:04
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Ubuntu 14.04. I don't want to install dconf-editor.

I just tried the following in a terminal:

$ gsettings set com.canonical.indicator.datetime custom-time-format "'%a %Y%m%d-%H%M%S'"
$

As you can see, there are no error messages or anything.

I then log out and log back in, but there has been no change to my clock display, which is currently %a %b %e %Y %T.

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    It's fixed now. They key to success is: gsettings set com.canonical.indicator.datetime time-format "'custom'" followed immediately by gsettings set com.canonical.indicator.datetime custom-time-format "'%a %Y%m%d-%H%M%S' – el_gallo_azul Mar 28 '15 at 3:28
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    This should be a comment and not an answer. An answer should fully answer the question. That is why you can comment on questions as well as being able to post an answer. – user364819 May 3 '17 at 20:17
  • The accepted answer already has all the info from your answer and your comment. – wjandrea May 4 '17 at 19:21

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