Change the Date & Time in the Menu Bar

In this video, we’re going to look at where we can set or change what is shown for our date and time in the menu bar. Apple changed where this is set in macOS Big Sur. Let’s look at how we change or set what is shown in our menu bar for our date and time on the Mac. Let’s go to my Mac.

Now go to the upper right-hand corner, you’re going to see I have the date and time. In past macOS versions, you could set what is shown here in the Date & Time preference pane. Let’s go and open up my System Preferences. I go over to my Apple menu, and then we go over to System Preferences. We would do what we would do in past versions of macOS and go down to Date & Time. Well, we no longer do that with macOS Big Sur. So now, where do you change what is shown in the menu bar? Well, you need to go to the Dock & Menu Bar preference pane. This is new in macOS Big Sur. Over on the left, we have all of our different settings, and when I swipe up here, You’re going to see we have Menu Bar Only, and under Menu Bar Only, we have Clock. This is now where I set what is shown in the menu bar for the clock.

So if I no longer want to have the day of the week or I no longer want to show the date, I now uncheck these here, and when we go up to the top, you’re going to see it only shows the time. I want to show the day of the week, but not the date; I go back over to my Dock & Menu Bar settings, click on show day the week, and now we can see we have the day of the week. I’m going to also show the date. So I go back over here and show the date.

So that’s how we can set what is shown for our date and time in the menu bar. We do this through the Dock & Menu Bar preference pane. This is new and macOS Big Sur. In previous versions of macOS, we would go to the Date & Time preference pane. Now with macOS Big Sur, we go to our Dock & Menu Bar preference pane.

So that’s how we set what is shown for our date and time in the Mac’s menu bar.