Are you an AM/PM person, or are you more of a 24-hour type? When you hear the time “1800”, does your mind automatically flick to 8pm or 6pm? Whichever way you look at the time, you want to make sure that when you glance to the bottom-right corner of your Windows desktop, that you immediately know what’s going on. To do that, you’ll need to see it in the correct format.
So we’re here to quickly tell you how to change the Windows 10 clock to the time format that suits you.
Counter-intuitively, in Windows 10 it’s not just a case of clicking on the clock and making your changes.
1. To change the time format, you need to right-click” the time in the taskbar instead, then click “Adjust date/time”.
2. In the Settings window that pops up, scroll down to the “Formats” heading and click “Change date and time formats”.
3. You can tweak things here like the first day of the way and the date format (between the European-style dd/mm/yy and the American mm/dd/yy formats, for example), but to change the time format you need to look at the “Short time” and “Long time” boxes.
In the “Short time” box, the 24-hour formats are the ones without the “tt” at the end (the “tt” stands in for AM and PM). So if you want a 12-hour clock, go for one of the time formats with “tt” at the end.
Same rules apply for the “Long time” clock, which also includes seconds.
When you’re done, you can just close the Settings window and that’s it! Your world is back in order and you can once again keep track of the time.
Conclusion
For such a simple process, Microsoft seemed to try their best to make it as confusing as possible. Still, now you know how it works, time itself is back in your hands.
Tech writer at Make Tech Easier. Enjoys Android, Windows, and tinkering with retro console emulation to breaking point.
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