How can I switch between 12 hour and 24 hour format in command line?

command-line time gsettings

46,521

Solution 1

Time settings, as as shown in the panel, are set with gsettings. You can set 12/24 hrs by the commands:

12-hour:

gsettings set com.canonical.indicator.datetime time-format 12-hour

24-hour:

gsettings set com.canonical.indicator.datetime time-format 24-hour

options are:

locale-default
12-hour
24-hour
custom

The same trick on Mate

...requires a different command:

12-hour:

dconf write /org/mate/panel/objects/clock/prefs/format "'12-hour'"

and, as one would expect, 24-hour:

dconf write /org/mate/panel/objects/clock/prefs/format "'24-hour'"

N.B. tested on Mate 16.04 by @Zana (thanks!)

Solution 2

It is not clear to me what exactly do you want. If you want just display the hour in your terminal window, you can try:

date +%R
date +%r
date +%H
date +%I
date +%H:%M
date +%I:%M

These are different time formats used to customize your time display. %R uses time with 24 hour and %r uses 12 hour format to display the whole time. If you want just hour with no minutes, etc. you can use %H (24 hour) or %I (12 hour). You can also combine them with minutes like that %H:%M, %I:%M. There are many other options. Take a look with man date.

Then if you want to change the system global date display go to Settings -> Region & Language.

There is also environment setting LC_TIME specifiying how time & date are displayed. In my case I can set it up in /etc/environment file like this:

LC_TIME="sl_SI.UTF-8"

You can also take a look at /etc/localtime. Try:

ls -l /etc/localtime

This file is linked to some file from /usr/share/zoneinfo/. Make a link like this:

ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Ljubljana /etc/localtime

and your local settings will be set to European Ljubljana, for instance. Fell free to use any other file from /usr/share/zoneinfo/. However, I believe this last settings is only setting for the timezone and not how the date & time are displayed.

Solution 3

For new users, if you are using gnome on ubuntu version >18.04

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface clock-format 12h

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface clock-format 24h

Solution 4

The locale settings can affect the time display format for the date command. E.g. With en_US it is 12-hour:

% LANG='en_US.UTF-8'; date
Tue 14 Jul 2020 09:13:29 PM BST

And 24-hour for en_GB:

% LANG='en_GB.UTF-8'; date
Tue 14 Jul 2020 21:13:29 PM BST

This can be changed for the system by running the following command (provided you have the appropriate language files installed):

sudo update-locale LANGUAGE=en_GB.UTF-8 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8

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46,521

Abhishek Poudel

Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

Abhishek Poudel over 1 year

I am in a learning phase. I could not find the command to change my time format from 12 hour to 24 hour. Can anyone please help me with this? Thank you!!
- heemayl almost 8 years
  
  Do you want to get the time or set the time from terminal?
- Jacob Vlijm almost 8 years
  
  Hi Abhishek. Could you give some feedback on the answers? Was it what you were looking for? please mention.
Zanna almost 8 years

I like this answer a lot (I upvoted it also) but in MATE I get 'no such schema' :( and in fact gsettings list-recursively | grep time-format returns nothing at all. I wonder how I can do it...
Jacob Vlijm almost 8 years

@Zanna, what version of Mate do you run? I found two settings that should work if settings made sense, but they don't change a thing on my VM: gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface clock-format 12h and dconf write /org/mate/panel/objects/clock/prefs/format "'12-hour'". (Mate 15.10)
Zanna almost 8 years

First one does nothing for me either (even on reboot), but dconf write /org/mate/panel/objects/clock/prefs/format "'12-hour"' works instantly (I undid it - I hate 12 hr clock haha)
Jacob Vlijm almost 8 years

@Zanna Greatgreat! thanks for testing, will add it to the answer :)
Zanna almost 8 years

^_^ my pleasure. Now trying the same in Xubuntu... dconf write /org/gnome/desktop/interface/clock-format "'12-hour'" should do it, but doesn't >_< I'll come back if I fix it
George Udosen over 7 years

Correct me if I am wrong but I tried "'12-hour"' and was unable to run till I did "'12-hour'" although my time still the same. Is that a typo in the answer?
Jacob Vlijm over 7 years

Hi @George I am on mobile currently, but I am pretty sure you are right, I will edit it in. Thanks a lot!
Ahmad Ismail almost 6 years

I used the code in Ubuntu Mate 18.04 and it worked fine. But when I restart the PC, it is back to 24Hour format again.
Ketil Malde over 4 years

I've linked /etc/localtime to the appropriate timezone, but I still get a 12-hour format (but the right timezone offset from GMT). I have no LC* or other variables set. (I get the correct output with LC_TIME=..... date, but I would like to have 24-hour time as the default.
nobody over 4 years

Take a look here askubuntu.com/questions/918973/…, how to setup LC_TIME.
Ketil Malde over 4 years

Thanks. It might be that the locale needs to be "enabled". However, I discovered that LANG was set to en_US.UTF-8 in my shell, 'unset'ing this environment variable changed the output of date to 24h format. (I haven't figured out how it got set in the first place, though.)
Henno over 3 years

*** update-locale: Error: invalid locale settings: LANGUAGE=en_GB.UTF-8 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8 can be fixed with sudo locale-gen "en_GB.UTF-8"
Pierz over 3 years

That error message usually means that the requested locale files are not installed - they can be installed: sudo apt install language-pack-XX
Sam Sirry over 3 years

My brain shorts out when I try to read Ljubljana
nobody over 3 years

@SamSirry :-) Read or pronounce? Try this ebralec.si/branje/?jezik=en. Paste Ljubljana in there and listen.