Change the Time Format to 12 or 24 Hour Format in Mac OS X

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Video: Change the Time Format to 12 or 24 Hour Format in Mac OS X

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You're watching VisiHow! In this tutorial, we will show you how you can change the time format from the 24-hour format to the standard AM or PM format and back again when using a Mac running OS X Yosemite.

1. 1
   To get started, we are going to need to open the "Date & Time" panel

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   There are two ways to do that.

   

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2. 2
   The first and the easiest way to open the date and time panel is to navigate to the clock and simply click it one time

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   When we click the clock, we will receive a menu, which will have the option to open the date and time preferences.

   

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3. 3
   We click "Open Date & Time Preferences..."

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   This will open the "Date & Timer" preferences menu. From there, we can change time quickly and easily.

   

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4. 4
   We click "Use a 24-hour clock" under "Time options"

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   We will see at the top that the AM or PM designation will disappear as the clock changes to the 24-hour format.

   

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5. 5
   If we click "Use a 24-hour clock" again, we will have the "Show AM/PM" option

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   In this video, "AM" is shown.

   

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6. 6
   We can uncheck "Show AM/PM" by clicking it

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   The clock will stay in the 12-hour format, but the "AM" or "PM" designation will not be shown.

   

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7. 7
   Let's click "Use a 24-hour clock"

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8. 8
   We close the "Date & Time" window

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   We do that by moving the cursor to the red circle with the black "x" at the left side and clicking it one time.

   

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9. 9
   The other method that we could use to access the time format function involves clicking the black apple icon on the top of the screen

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   We click "System Preferences..."

   

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10. 10
    Alternatively, we move the cursor to the dock at the bottom if the "System Preferences" are docked

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    We click "System Preferences". The reason that we might want to do this alternatively is that we might hide time from the top bar and not be able to click the time at the top bar to change the format.

    

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11. 11
    Once we've opened "System Preferences", we move the cursor to the fifth icon in the fourth row and click it

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    The icon is "Date & Time" that refers us to date and time preferences. One click on the icon will open "Date & Time" menu, and we will have the same functionality that we would have by simply clicking the clock and selecting "Open Date & Time Preferences..."

    

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12. 12
    Let's close the "Date & Time" window by clicking the red circle with the black "x" at the left

    .

    

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