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As it is the names that are given to screenshots in Mac OSX are not accurately named to be sorted alphabetical (and then numerical).

In the names below you'll see that a screen shot taken at 3PM is ordered before the picture taken at 12PM. 

Screen Shot 2012-10-10 at 3.05.19 PM.png 
Screen Shot 2012-10-10 at 12.50.15 PM

For it to be ordered correctly either 24hr military time needs to be used or the time needs to be 2 digits. IE "3.05.19" needs to be renamed to "03.05.19".

Is there a way to do this?

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  • See my answer for a way to change the complete name sequentially. As far as I know, there's no other way (i.e. through the keyboard shortcuts or other than screencapture). Let me know if it doesn't work for you or so, I'll happily reopen and we'll figure things out.
    – slhck
    Commented Oct 10, 2012 at 20:28
  • Hi slhck - Thanks for the link but the solutions there don't answer my question. I'd like to keep the name the same but add either a "0" before the time or use military time. Well now that I think about it military time won't work.
    – 1.21 gigawatts
    Commented Oct 11, 2012 at 4:10

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
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Screenshots use the Medium time format you specify in System Preferences » Language & Text » Times (with colons replaced by periods as they're invalid in file names). Click Customize… and enter a sane value there, and you're good.

Preferences dialog screenshot

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    FWIW, the US 12 hour clock format will never properly sort, even if you add the leading zero. 12.30 AM is an hour earlier than [0]1.30 AM... It's simply a stupid format.
    – Daniel Beck ♦
    Commented Oct 11, 2012 at 6:37
  • Also note that even if you set the hour to 24 hour format, it will still show the AM/PM section. So you have to enter the field and backspace to delete it
    – Eric Majerus
    Commented Oct 25, 2019 at 18:28
  • Good answer. But you don't have to change the colons to periods. The screenshot filename uses periods even if colons are used in the format. See also apple.stackexchange.com/questions/245771/…
    – Dan King
    Commented Oct 8, 2021 at 23:58
  • This has since been moved to "Language & Region" -> Advanced -> Times, but otherwise this works.
    – Lucas Wiman
    Commented Apr 11, 2022 at 19:42
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IN Sys Prefs / Language & Region, set the Time Format to 24 hour clock and the Snapshot names will use 24 hr format, without AM or PM. They will then sort correctly.

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  • while the higher voted answer is correct, this one is fundamentally sound.
    – Jerome
    Commented Nov 14, 2017 at 23:19
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Update for those of us with newer macbooks:

  1. System Preferences > Language & Region > Advanced > Times
  2. In the Medium format, change the hour to 00-23 and delete the AM

enter image description here

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