Stupid Geek Tricks: Show Your Name In the System Clock
This tip is absolutely and completely useless, and will even make applications that depend on timestamps have issues. It's mostly just to be used as a cool trick you can show off to your friends, so we're going to show you how it works.
The way this trick works is by modifying the regional settings for the time format. Instead of using just AM or PM, you can put up to 12 characters of text in that field.
Start by opening Regional and Language Options from the start menu search box or the control panel.
On the Formats tab you'll see the "Customize this format" button, which you'll need to choose.
Select the Time tab, and then here's where we can make whatever settings we want.
I chose to set mine to "AM - Geek" so I could still see AM or PM, but you can choose any 12 characters for either field. Keep in mind that the PM symbol is only going to display during the "PM" hours.
This does change more than just the displayed clock, so I'd advise not using this on a computer you do actual work on. Using the F5 key in notepad shows the "Geek" text as well:
It's one of those things that's interesting to know… just not very useful. It does work in XP as well.
What will it change more, and what problems can it make (in Windows XP)?
Pretty much every application that displays the time will start to display with whatever custom text you put in there.
It shouldn't theoretically cause anything to fail… it just makes things look really weird all over the place.
awhile ago I did this on my work computer, and I put something weird there next to my clock, something like "is monday I have a hang over" really stupid,!! I forgot to remove the text and I sent an e-mail to my boss, which had that text on the time stamp.. I wonder if he noticed it.. jejejjeje.
good blog geek… I been reading this blog for awhile, today is the first time I actually comment on it..
I never realized you could do that. At first I didn't think it was really worth it, but it could be an easy way for businesses to quickly identify computers.
I live in Denmark, and we don't use AM and PM here. We just use a 24 hour clock. I have tried to write in my name in "AM" and "PM", but nothing happens. I got a text field called "Time separator" with just a single ":" in it.
Gustav -
Even though I live in the US, I use 24-hour time at work. What I did was set it up as follows:
Time Format: HH:mm tt
Time seperator: :
AM Symbol: - Jared
PM Symbol: - Jared
Really good trick. Share more tricks like this.
Is there any way to get the second clock to show 24 hour format while leaving the primary clock in 12 hour format?
Hello…Is there any way to show the seconds ticking by in the System Clock… Thanks