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shmu
Asked: 2020-01-03 21:36:02 +0800 CST

Kubuntu panel clock display in 12-hour format but without AM/PM?

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I have the Kubuntu panel positioned vertically and that doesn't leave a lot of room for horizontal text strings. The clock is in 12-hour format, and the AM/PM text after the HH:MM makes the text string too long. How can I get 12-hour format, without the AM/PM text?

panel kubuntu clock

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    I don't know how to remove AM/PM from Kubuntu's digital clock if the time display is set to "12-Hour" and don't see any such options. If it's possible, it would probably involve knowledge of programming qt applications.

    However, it is possible to use Conky to display 12-Hour times without AM/PM. Conky uses the format specified by man strftime. In other words, date +%I:%M will output 06:05 when the current time is 18:05.

    I used Conky with the conky.conf below to add 12-Hour times without AM/PM just below Kubuntu's panel so that both Kubuntu's digital clock displaying 24-Hour time and Conky's window showing 12-Hour time (without AM/PM) are visible:

    Both 24-Hour and 12-Hour formats visible

    Kubuntu panel + Conky

    To do this, I reduced the length of the vertical panel so that some space is available in the left lower corner of the screen.

    I installed conky with sudo apt install conky-all and created 12h-conky.conf with the following content in ~/.config/conky.

    conky.config = {
    update_interval = 1,
    double_buffer = true,
    no_buffers = true,
    text_buffer_size = 2048,
    own_window = true,
    own_window_class = 'conky',
    own_window_colour = '050505',
    own_window_transparent = yes,
    own_window_argb_visual = true,
    own_window_argb_value = 5,
    own_window_hints = 'undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager',
    own_window_type = 'dock',
    background = false,
    gap_y = 0,
    gap_x = 1,
    alignment = 'bottom_left',
    draw_shades = false,
    draw_outline = false,
    draw_borders = false,
    use_xft = true, --needed to show font correctly
    uppercase = true
}

conky.text = [[
${font Noto:size=13}${color cccccc}${time %I}:${time %M}
]]

    Notes:

    1. update_interval = 1, should be changed to update_interval = 30, or more once the tweaking (of font, font size, font color, background color and transparency, etc) is done.
    2. This Conky can be run on demand using conky -c $HOME/.config/conky/12h-conky.conf & exit or it can be added to one's autostart.

    Another route is to use latte dock. It displays an analogue clock (by default) which fits decently in the dock when oriented vertically. If need be, the conky can still be used but I changed bottom_left to bottom_right.

    Latte dock with analogue clock plus conky

    Latte Dock is very configurable. I have version 0.9.7 because I use the kubuntu-backports ppa in Kubuntu 19.10:

    lattedock 0.9.7
Operating System: Kubuntu 19.10
KDE Plasma Version: 5.17.4
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.65.0
Qt Version: 5.12.4
Kernel Version: 5.3.0-24-generic
OS Type: 64-bit
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