Customizing Clock Format

[tippunmon1953]

Please please please make the panel clock fully configurable (like XFCE does it) so that we can change the awful format currently offered. I'm autistic and cannot stand the current back to front format with the day of the month being in the wrong place and the appalling use of the very old fashioned "am" and "pm" delineation. If this could be configured by the user I would probably switch to Cosmic since it offers such a lot of good things but this shortcoming really lets it down and I'm afraid I just can't live with it. In XFCE I can alter the date to my own preference which would be %A, %d %B %Y %R:%S %Z which at the time of writing would yield Thursday, 29 January 2026 22:32:27 GMT which is much clearer and better.

[jacobgkau]

the appalling use of the very old fashioned "am" and "pm" delineation.

You can already turn this off by turning on the 24-hour time setting in Settings -> Time & language -> Date & time.

As for the rest, you can already customize it by creating a config file at ~/.config/cosmic/com.system76.CosmicAppletTime/v1/format_strftime and specifying a strftime format. This was implemented here: pop-os/cosmic-applets#1129 It's just not exposed in COSMIC Settings yet because the Settings PR was held due to UX concerns.

my own preference which would be %A, %d %B %Y %R:%S %Z which at the time of writing would yield Thursday, 29 January 2026 22:32:27 GMT

The config file should say "%A, %d %B %Y %H:%M:%S %Z" to achieve the closest thing possible to this. The timezone can't currently display a text abbreviation and will instead be numbers due to how this is implemented: chronotope/chrono#960

[jacobgkau]

By the way, I've renamed your discussion from "Awful Clock Format" to "Customizing Clock Format" to sound less hostile.

[tippunmon1953]

Thanks for your help I really appreciate it. Sorry if the terminology of the titling sounded hostile it wasn't meant to be. As far as I was concerned it was a statement of fact, but I believe my diagnosed autism meant that I was blind to any other conclusion that could be made from my titling. Thanks for bringing your concern to my attention. I'll try to do better. David Richardson

…

On 29 Jan 2026 at 22:42, Jacob Kauffmann ***@***.***> wrote: > > > the appalling use of the very old fashioned "am" and "pm" delineation. > > You can already turn this off by turning on the 24-hour time setting in Settings -> Time & language -> Date & time. As for the rest, you can already customize it by creating a config file at ~/.config/cosmic/com.system76.CosmicAppletTime/v1/format_strftim and specifying a strftime format. This was implemented here: pop-os/cosmic-applets#1129 It's just not exposed in COSMIC Settings yet because the Settings PR was held due to UX concerns. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe. You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[tippunmon1953]

Thanks for your kind help; however I have created and formatted a text file as you suggested, but cannot get the system to use it. I am in live usb testing mode, created the file as described with the exact format %A etcetera and deleted all the other files in the v1 folder. I then used the command sudo killall cosmic-panel thinking this would enable my custom formatting but this does not appear on the panel. Would you please tell me what I am doing wrong here? Thanks for your time, it is greatly appreciated.

David Richardson

[jacobgkau]

Sorry, you'll need to add quotation marks around the entire string in that file. I forgot that part in my comment before; edited to add them now.

You don't need sudo to kill the panel (it runs as your user). You also shouldn't need to kill the panel at all for this-- the applet watches the config and updates live.

[tippunmon1953]

Thank you so much this works now, apart from the %Z which displays+0.00 instead of GMT which it should, so I'm still trying to understand why. All the settings for Timezone (Europe/London) and regional formatting are correctly set, so I'm doing some research. I've also got to sort the panel font to make it bigger, so I'm having fun trying to learn how. Once again many thanks for your time and trouble in helping me.

David Richardson

[jacobgkau]

apart from the %Z which displays+0.00 instead of GMT which it should, so I'm still trying to understand why.

I specifically called out earlier that displaying the text acronym isn't supported yet:

The timezone can't currently display a text abbreviation and will instead be numbers due to how this is implemented: chronotope/chrono#960

Just pointing back to that so you don't waste too much of your time trying to get it working. For now, you can use a lowercase z instead of uppercase to omit the punctuation from the numeric value, or omit the timezone altogether. Unlike the rest of the clock, the timezone doesn't change on a time-based basis (and if you're UTC anyway, it's not exactly critical information).

[tippunmon1953]

Yes of course you did point this out and I apologise because in my excitement I forgot you had already made this clear. Thanks again. David Richardson

…

On 30 Jan 2026 at 20:53, Jacob Kauffmann ***@***.***> wrote: > > > apart from the %Z which displays+0.00 instead of GMT which it should, so I'm still trying to understand why. > > I specifically called out earlier that displaying the text acronym isn't supported yet: > > > The timezone can't currently display a text abbreviation and will instead be numbers due to how this is implemented: chronotope/chrono#960 > > Just pointing back to that so you don't waste too much of your time trying to get it working. For now, you can use a lowercase z instead of uppercase to omit the punctuation from the numeric value, or omit the timezone altogether. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or unsubscribe. You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>