It’s the little things that sometimes lead people to distraction. This is the case for Macworld readers who wonder how to change the date and time in the menu bar, a feature available for decades on Macs. With macOS 11 Big Sur, Apple moved the customization options from the Clock tab to the Date & Time preference pane to System Preferences > Dock and menu bar.
With the growing number of managed items in the Dock and menu bar, it made sense for Apple to move all of these settings to one place. However, with almost every other menu bar item, you will find a checkbox or other settings in their respective preference pane. and in the Dock pane and menu bar.
Not worth it. Just open the Dock and menu bar pane, click The clock below Menu bar only in the list on the left, and you can customize as you always have: use a 24-hour clock, flash the hour separators for each passing second, etc.
The bonus of this new location? An overview of all your choices appears in the upper right corner of the pane for the clock and all other menu bar and control center choices. It’s a great compact visualization, although you can also see the changes take effect instantly in the menu bar.
Of course, that will change once again with the release later this year of macOS 13 Ventura! In this next version, you will find the Clock and Menu Bar options in Settings > Control centerwhich now includes all control center items and Menu bar items only. Click on Clock options to the right of the Clock label to access familiar choices. Preview ? Let’s go.
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