iCal Missing AM/PM Option? Change to 24-hour Mode!
Am I crazy or is there no way to make iCal show AM/PM when editing a calendar entry?
The AM/PM option IS there, because if I use the arrow key to move over to next field, there’s a hidden AM/PM field which I can change. However, unless I know what it’s already set to, I have no way of knowing what I’m changing it to. Very annoying.
My fix for this is to simply use 24-hour mode, which I already use on my main system clock anyway. Unfortunately, enabling the “Use a 24-hour clock” option in the Date & Time settings does not enable 24-hour clock mode in iCal. To do this, you must modify the International settings (!?).
System Preferences -> International -> Formats -> Times -> Customize
From here, you can select and delete the AM/PM option from the white field and then click the little arrow on the hour field to change it’s format to 24-hour (this screen is very non-intuitive for something made by Apple). I made the changes to Short, Medium, Long, and Full time formats and then clicked OK and WHAM! iCal showed 24-hour time and made it possible to easily change the time on an entry.
4 Comments, Comment or Ping
Juan
Thanks, it is one of the first thing that I see from apple that is really difficult to set up. I could not made it without your guide. Thanks a lot.
Nov 2nd, 2008
Raam
You’re welcome, Juan! I’m glad I could help!
Nov 3rd, 2008
K
Thanks, that helped. I was stuck with AM/PM which is so unintuitive for a european. We don’t use that. EVER.
Nov 3rd, 2008
Raam
K,
I don’t use AM/PM either… I find 24-hour time to be so much more intuitive! I also prefer my dates to be written like YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS (e.g., 2008-11-03 16:34:02), since that easily represents greatest to least measurement of time from left to right.
Nov 3rd, 2008
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