Windows 7 - display date using small icons

Question

I recently upgraded to Windows 7 and need the date displayed with the time. This works, but only if I use large icons in the taskbar settings which is quite ugly.

Any ideas how to display the time and date when only using small taskbar icons?

Answer 1

With Windows 7 or Vista (32-bit or 64-bit) and small icons you can show both the date and time using the free program Skinny Clock from www.rawos.com/sclock/ or Softpedia. I have ver 1.15 Beta 1, which needs tweaking for optimum results. Set autoload (right-click the icon in the Taskbar, Settings, General, tick Autorun). Disable the Clock Window (Settings, Clock Window, click the definition file None button). Set the Taskbar Clock (Settings, Taskbar Clock, tick Override Taskbar - experimental but works) and select the font, colours and clock mask (I use "h:nnam/pm ddMMM").

Answer 2

if you reduce the DPI settings below 100% (96 DPI) to 80 or 90% you should see time AND date in the task bar with 'small icons'. but since the folks at Microsoft in their infinite wisdom have set the minimum limit to 100% you will have to edit the registry for that:

if you want to use DPI settings below 96 (100%), start the Registry Editor (backup your registry first) and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG\Software\Fonts

LogPixels value is 96 decimal.

For 90 percent font size, set to 86 decimal.

For 80 percent font size, set to 76 decimal.

Close REGEDIT and reboot the computer.

If some text appears too small or blurry try different value or return to 96 dpi.

Source: Vista less than 96 DPI by registry change (works for Windows 7)

Voilá! Time AND date with small icons in the task bar (with 90% DPI settings).

Answer 3

You can, but you either have to unlock the task bar and enlarge it to be twice as tall; or you can move it to one of the side edges of the monitor. Unfortunatly, both of those options make the bar bigger than just using Large Icons.

Answer 4

I misread your question and thought you wanted the day of the week displayed.

Just re-read through it and unfortunately, what you want (I am pretty sure) is not possible; I messed around with various settings for ages, but cannot see any way of doing it.

However, if anyone wants to do what I thought I read, the following should help!... (Took me a while to make and don't want to delete as it is useful stuff!)

This is due to small icons defaulting to the system "Short date"... But this can be changed.

If You go to Region and Language you can go to Additional settings under the formats tab.

Change Short date from dd/MM/yyyy to dddd dd/MM/yyyy (I am in England, obviously change month (MM) around depending on how you like it).

You should now see the day of the week on the taskbar:

(I would have thought this would lead to errors somewhere, but three months since I have changed this and not come up with any).

Answer 5

I had absolutely no luck with the up-voted Skinny Clock utility. Instead I tried "TClock", which was mentioned in a side conversation as not being compatible with Windows 7 circa 2009. Apparently we didn't have long to wait- in 2010 an update was released that is fully compatible with Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008/7 32 & 64 bit.

TClock 2010 works like a charm for me, and has every option I could imagine needing. The ability to have a global hotkey open a quick calendar is especially helpful. As an added bonus the application is (mostly) self-contained and doesn't require administrative privileges.

My setup with TClock 2010, Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit, and small taskbar icons:

Answer 6

You can also increase the height of the taskbar when using the non-large icons setting and the entire date will be displayed.

This allows you to use a better looking taskbar (albeit still the same size as the "use large ugly icons" option) and see the entire date/clock.