How to enable seconds in system clock

Anonymous
2023-02-02T20:46:44+00:00

Title says it all.

Found this article, which had a couple suggestions: https://winaero.com/how-to-enable-seconds-for-the-taskbar-clock-in-windows-11/

" Settings > Personalization > Taskbar > Taskbar behaviors, and check the “Show seconds in system tray clock” option."

Is not there for me

Tried registry fixes, but that made it worse and actually removed the system clock all together, while also breaking the start menu completely. Had to undo that change and now back to square one.

Why on Earth would Microsoft remove the seconds from the clock? I use it quite often for a game I play.. Very frustrating when they remove common sense features like this. Really looks like MSoft put some extremely incompetent people in charge of Win 11. Reminds me of when they hired the guy from Nike to design Win 8 Metro UI. I think we all remember how that went!!

EDIT: WAS fixed for about 2 months with April update, but now it's gone again!!!

Someone from Microsoft owes me an explanation!!

Windows for home | Windows 11 | Settings

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Anonymous
2023-04-29T09:12:23+00:00

Fix in latest stable update from April (then one bot on Path Tuesday, but later).

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  1. Anonymous
    2025-04-29T18:34:34+00:00

    Sometimes there are multiple ways to get to the same place, yes, but I don't think that's what we're seeing.

    As I thought I'd said, I have looked in the place you are describing (the "Date & time" section), navigating by drilling down from the top level one section at a time - and on my Windows 11 computer, the setting is not visible there.

    I searched for 'seconds' in the Settings interface, and it found the setting. The place where it found it is the one I've described, under the Taskbar section. I navigated back to that location from the top level, drilling down one section at a time, just as in the other case - and once again, I did find the setting visible there.

    That is not a matter of there being multiple ways to get to the same place. It is a matter of the setting being in one place on one computer, and in a different place on another.

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  2. Anonymous
    2025-04-29T16:55:49+00:00

    Throughout all the years of windows, it seems there are multiple ways to get to the same place. That's actually nice, but it can make it hard to recall how you got there.

    It may not be a criterion according to the version, but rather where you are when you start looking for the function.

    On my system, if I get to Personalization> Taskbar, I don't find anything about seconds, but if I scroll just past Taskbar behaviors, I have related settings /Date & time, which goes to "time & language > date & time" where you can get to the seconds display. I think this may count as a 3rd way to get there.

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  3. Anonymous
    2025-04-28T23:52:26+00:00

    In my case, I'm running Windows 11 Education 24H2 26100.1742, and as I said previously (on the previous page, now), I find the setting not under:

    Settings -> Time & language -> Date & time

    but under:

    Settings -> Personalization -> Taskbar -> Taskbar behaviors

    I'm curious to figure out what criterion it is which leads to this difference in where the setting is located.

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  4. Anonymous
    2025-04-28T21:45:38+00:00

    The seconds display works in the version I have, as well. The question I was asking was about the version difference between the one I have (whose build I should be able to get later this evening), in which the setting is located in one place, and the ones that others seem to have, in which the setting is located in another place.

    It may or may not be worth noting that the version I have is Windows 11 Education, which is a variant on Windows 11 Enterprise (exactly the same functionality, just a different set of defaults). In addition to build numbers (such as you gave) and release name (such as 24H2, 23H2, etc.), it might be worthwhile for each person who reports seeing different results to specify which edition that person is running.

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