How do I change the date format? [duplicate]

Solution 1:

This is the new behaviour in Yosemite and it can't easily be changed. The menu bar format now doesn't read your custom format and instead displays a barely customizable format instead. The only available options for it can be found in System Preferences -> Date & Time -> Clock.

One thing you could do is use a third party utility like Day-O, which is free and does exactly what you seek -> https://shauninman.com/archive/2016/10/20/day_o_2_mac_menu_bar_clock.

If you want things more natively, you could try editing the corresponding plist file directly (com.apple.menuextra.clock). I haven't however had much luck with it.

Open Terminal and type the following:

Reading the current settings:

defaults read com.apple.menuextra.clock

Setting them:

defaults write com.apple.menuextra.clock "DateFormat" 'EEE hh:mm a'

Or 24 hours format with the (day of the) month and seconds:

defaults write com.apple.menuextra.clock "DateFormat" 'EEE d MMM HH:mm:ss'

Then refresh the menu bar using:

killall -KILL SystemUIServer

Using w you should be able to add week number, but I haven't had any luck with that and it keeps resetting the week number.

Solution 2:

Day-O 2 is the best app for this IMO. https://shauninman.com/archive/2016/10/20/day_o_2_mac_menu_bar_clock

If you uncheck "Show Icon," it's basically identical to the default widget.