Customize clock item

[kbsali]

Expected behaviour

I would like to display the date as well as the time.

Actual behaviour

I only have the time displayed and cannot find any options/settings to also show the date in the applet.

Steps to reproduce the behaviour

MATE general version

1.22

Package version

1.22.1

Linux Distribution

Ubuntu-Mate 19.10

Link to downstream report of your Distribution

[lukefromdc]

The clock is not an indicator, it is a separate panel applet shipped with mate-panel itself.

Right-click on the clock, click "preferences" in the menu that comes up. In the default "General" tab you can select 12 or 24 hour format, "show the date," "show seconds," "show week numbers in calendar," "show weather," and "show temperature"

[lukefromdc]

Ubuntu does offer "indicator-datetime" https://packages.ubuntu.com/eoan/indicator-datetime If you are using indicator-datetime and not the panel clock, it should be providing a menu item for preferences, which should include setting up the time/date display format. If it does not, that should be an issue in indicator-datetime itself, as indicators send their menu items to the indicator applet (or mate-panel's native SNI support).

If you are using indicator-datetime and there is supposed to be a preferences menu for it but it's not working (and especially if it does work with the indicator applet removed and org->mate->panel->general->enable-sni-support set to TRUE in dconf-editor), then we would have an issue with this package and I will reopen this

[kbsali]

I have indeed added the clock applet to displaythe date time, but on Ubuntu-Mate the indicator applet also includes the clock but does allow to update its preferences (or at least I could not find the option). See my setup :

[lukefromdc]

That looks like a bug in Ubuntu's Indicator Applet Complete or more likely indicator-datetime, not this package and you should open an issue there so it can be resolved

[kbsali]

Perfect, thanks for your help! :)

[pfalcon]

That looks like a bug in Ubuntu's Indicator Applet Complete

So, let's go over the situation again, using the screenshot in comment: https://github.com/mate-desktop/mate-indicator-applet/issues/55#issuecomment-594157936 :

1. There's "MATE Indicator Applet Complete", which is this repository.
2. It forcibly shows time/clock indicator, without any means to disable or configure it.
3. It's a common sense that this is a bug in this repository, regardless of its status in Ubuntu.

I may very well believe that in Ubuntu UI (Unity, or how it's called these days), forcibly showing something in user's face without their ability to configure/disable it is a "feature". That's exactly the reason why we don't use Ubuntu Unity and use MATE instead. So please kindly help to users fix this bug, inherited from Ubuntu. (The fix can be as simple as just disabling that unconditional clock item in "Indicator Applet Complete", given that a user can get a fully configurable clock via another applet, named "Clock" (also on the screenshot above)).

[pfalcon]

OMG, this is the state of modern computing at its best:

To get rid of that ugly duplicated clock indicator, delete "Indicator Applet Complete", and use just "Indicator Applet" (without "Complete). They appear to be different exactly in that useless clock item.

To add/configure clock, again, use "Clock" applet.

[hugobuddel]

Thanks for the investigation @pfalcon!

Note to the maintainers of this package, the "Indicator Applet Complete" is the default when using MATE on Ubuntu 20.04. That is, the only clock that is on the screen is from the "Indicator Applet Complete". There is no "Clock" applet by default, and the date is not shown anywhere on the screen. From the about menu (right clicking the clock), I inferred that this is the repository responsible for it. So it is natural that users end up here when they want to customize the display of their clock.

To add something useful to the conversation, it is also possible to disable the clock in the "Indicator Applet Complete" with gsettings, thereby making it visually identical to the "Indicator Applet":

gsettings set com.canonical.indicator.datetime show-clock false

Adding the date is possible as well, which was my goal too, as I keep glancing to the top right of the screen when wanting to know the current date:

gsettings set com.canonical.indicator.datetime show-date true

So now there are two options to display the date on the panel, and I don't know how to chose one over the other.

I haven't been able to figure out what the "Indicator Applet Complete" adds above just the "Indicator Applet" and the "Clock". The "Indicator Applet Complete" makes it harder to change how the clock looks (having to search closed github issues or dconf-settings is bad UX), and I have not discovered any benefits, but there must be, because it must have a reason to exist. What am I missing when replacing "Indicator Applet Complete" with "Indicator Applet" + "Clock"?

[hugobuddel]

It seems that this problem might be fixed in Ubuntu MATE 21.04. Apparently MATE switched to Ayatana Indicators in 20.10 and that screenshot shows that an "Ayatana Indicators Settings" screen with "Date and Time" settings has been added to the Control Center in 21.04.

So it is probably easier to change how the default clock looks in MATE 21.04 and up, but I haven't actually verified this myself.

[hugobuddel]

Apparently the 'show-clock' setting has been removed though: https://github.com/AyatanaIndicators/ayatana-indicator-datetime/pull/17 , so the "Indicator Applet Complete" without clock + "Clock" seems to be no longer possible, but that is probably not problematic, since either "Indicator Applet Complete" with date, or "Indicator Applet" + "Clock" seems to make more sense. (It is not yet clear to me what the difference is between "Indicator Applet Complete" and "Indicator Applet" other than the datetime indicator though.)