iCal Dock icon should show today's date

With all the other great things OS X and Apple applications bring to the digital table, I'm genuinely surprised that the iCal icon doesn't have as much functionality as the Mail icon. Would there be an easy way to do this with a plugin?

The only way to get it to show the current date, is to leave the program open and click on the red dot to close the window.

Wow, thanks rman! It only uses about 15M of RAM to keep it running, I might just have it start when I boot. That's great, thanks!

You can also show it in the menu bar if you fiddle with the Date and Time settings, or get a widget...

IronMac -- I do have the calendar widget, I'm trying to avoid having to jump to the Dashboard every time I need the date. I tried playing in the menu bar date & time settings and couldn't find a way to show the actual date (day of the week yes, but date no).

The iCal thing works for my needs, and I see it as another elegant OS X thing.

But thanks!

ToddG said:

I tried playing in the menu bar date & time settings and couldn't find a way to show the actual date

Click to expand...

Try this:

http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/showpost.php?p=273758&postcount=7

D3v1 your amazing bravo

odd, tried that instruction in the linked thread.

customized the date to DoW.Date.Month.Year (Thu.01.Jan.2006)

copied that into the time under customize time (Thu.01.Jan.2006 23:59)

"ok'd" everything, even tried a restart, my time still says: "Thu 1:56 CST" on the bar.

The iCal dock icon shows my birthday, July 17, by default.

I like that.

D3v1L80Y said:

Try this:

http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/showpost.php?p=273758&postcount=7

Click to expand...

That was AWESOME! Thanks, D3v1L80Y!

Todd and/or hotskate, did it actually work for you guys?

worked for me

well, i guess i'll have to tinker some more.

what's the format you've got showing up now?

Thu Dec 14, 2006 7:36PM

i guess i can try that format. maybe it like some formts over others, and/or i'm trying to use some sort of "illegal" or incompatable format.

thx!

Lol maybe! give it a whirl

This may be a quick (and inelegant) work around, if it suits you. It worked fine on my PowerMac last night.

Write an AppleScript that simply says:

activate application "iCal"
do shell script "killall iCal"

Save it as an app and set it in your Login Items.

As soon as you log in, the app will launch and immediately be closed, resulting in the current date being displayed on the icon.

Worked great for me.

It's:
Preferences->Internation->Formats->Time->Customize

Mine looks like this:

yep, that's exactly what i did, just like the linked instructions.

made a date format i liked in the customize date area, then copied it into the time customize area. (as my specific example above)

still haven't had a chance to check this out - no time to jump on the mac last night at work, or tonight yet. (posting from work using xp)

well, i finally got it to work...

whole desktop, but it has the adjusted clock

not sure how i did it, but i finally changed the short, medium, and long versions of the time, eventually it stuck!