Is there a way to display the year on the desktop?

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Hi. I have upgraded several times (currently on 10.10.1) and at every upgrade I tried to find a way to customize the date on the desktop to include the year. Is there a way to have the year display? To clarify, the date is always displayed thusly: day, month, day, time (no year). I have looked at all the System Preferances/Display tabs and can't find a way to customize it to display the year on the desktop. Thank you in advance for your help.
 

bobtomay

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I will "assume" you are talking about the date in the menu bar at the top of the screen rather than the desktop.

Still the same answer as here - link.

Not any way I know of to change the display of the date &/or add the year on the menu bar date from within the GUI of OS X since 10.8.

Never tried iStat recommended in that thread - wasn't worth that much to me just to change the format of the date in the menu bar.
 
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Try Geektool. Can put calendar, time, all kinds of stuff on desktop.
Might not be what you're looking for.
 

chscag

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Never tried iStat recommended in that thread - wasn't worth that much to me just to change the format of the date in the menu bar.

The only app that I know of which can put the year along with the day month is the "istat Menus.app". However, it's probably not worth buying it just for that. I have and use "istat menus" but do not use it to display the date. I think I can keep track of what year it is without a reminder. ;P
 
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If you're not using Yosemite, you can use the free Day-O, and then set its display settings to "EEE, MMM d, ''yy" instead of the default "E h:mm a" or anything else from his link to "Date Format Patterns" : UTS #35: Unicode Locale Data Markup Language

Day-O can be downloaded at: Day-O // ShaunInman.com

You should then end up with a date display in the menubar like so:

Screen Shot 2014-12-25 at 5.39.25 PM.png
 

chscag

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He's using Yosemite, but that's a nice app. And it appears he will be updating it for Yosemite in the future. Like I said above, iStat Menus will also display the year but of course it does much more than that. It's not free though.
 
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He's using Yosemite, but that's a nice app. And it appears he will be updating it for Yosemite in the future. Like I said above, iStat Menus will also display the year but of course it does much more than that. It's not free though.



Hmmm… I missed the OP's use of Yosemite, but I read the developers note differently:
"Update: I will not be updating Day-O for OS X Yosemite in the foreseeable future. …"

One could always try it and if it doesn't work in Yosemite, just add it to list of things that don't work with Yosemite. Too much and too many for me and even Mavericks broke some stuff for me. :(
 

chscag

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You're right, looks like I missed that about not developing for Yosemite.
 

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