It seems there were a few people who stumbled upon my blog looking to fix the KDE 4 clock to display time in a 12-hour format. I felt guilty, because I didn’t actually provide any real information on the subject in the post that led them here. It’s easy, but a little counterintuitive, so here’s a step by step of how to do it:
Open up the KDE 4 System Settings, and click on the “Regional & Language” icon. Then, click on the “Time & Dates” tab, and change the time format from “HH:MM:SS” to “pH:MM:SS AMPM”. You’ll probably need to restart the desktop.
That’s it. Hopefully, the KDE team will do something soon to make doing this more intuitive.
The Reclusive Geek 
thanks that was really driving me crazy!
Me too! Thanks a bunch. I kept clicking on everything looking for a way to change that.
In the same dialog “Country/Region & Language” (#> kcmshell4 language), my “Country or region:” setting was not defined. After setting to “Unites States of America” everything was setup properly. Although, I did go back and change “PH:MM:SS AMPM” to “pH:MM:SS AMPM”.
Thanks for the help and tips.
Thanks a lot for that. This was really getting to me. I was waiting for the ‘bug’ to fixed in a future release… duh!
That one is tricky. The clock option itself lets you change timezones but not the format. Who would ever thought the time format setting was fetched in far-away system settings?
Thanks. I thought to check system settings, but after not seeing it in date and time or appearance I was stumped.
Yes, but now how do you change the date format?
changing the date format in Country/ Region & Language doesn’t seem to affect the digital clock display.
A bug, a bug, arr, it’s a bug.
Badger badger badger badger badger badger badger mushroom mushroom….
Thank you, Wow, that was simple. Been driving my insane since KDE4 released. I have tried Linux before but I am a new Kubuntu user things like this were really turning me off to Linux. Luckily there is no shortage of helpful people like you to work out these little details. Maybe soon I will be free of the mother-ship(Microsoft).
Why KDE 4.2 has a person going to 4-different places to get the clock customized is beyond me. Thank you very much for your help here as I now have it the way I like.
YKS
Thanks alot! I don’t know why they made the military clock format default…
It would be nice to see a link to this setting from the Digital Clock applet. I also wish I could find a way to display just a/p instead of am/pm. If you don’t want to log out to see the changes, just run “killall plasmadesktop” from a terminal, then hit alt+f2 and run plasmadesktop again.
My Gentoo kde4.3.3 digital cloock lost the time zone data, only UTC. I did emerge -e kde-meta and libplasmaclock and one time all data is back and working, but after some time data is lost and only UTC is there.
Hey, is there any way to have the clock put the date UNDER (or over) the time? Why does the time font have to be so BIG?
you don’t have to restart after changing it – just “killall plasma-desktop” and then “plasma-desktop”.
So what needs to be done to make the clock not ignore leap seconds? The time zone is correct (right/America/Denver) and /etc/localtime matches this zone file. It’s set to use that as the default. I’ve restarted the plasma desktop. It is still off by the number of leap seconds. Other clocks are correct (bash command line, date, xclock)…
WHOO-HOO!
I *finally* have a proper 24-hour time display!
Thanks 10e9!
I believe “Regional & Language” is under Windows XP, not sure, under KDE4 on Slackware is LOCALE
My gripe with KDE 4.8.5 with regard to the digital plasma clock:
When I set the time zone to UTC, the AM/PM should go away and the time format should be DEFACTO be 24 hour format with no “AM” or “PM” label
Currently you have just one choice or the other:
HH:MM:SS
or
PH:MM:SS AMPM
but this has to be the setting for every clock you have, I’d prefer to have multiple clocks, ie. one with 12 hour formatted local time with the AM/PM label and another with UTC 24 time without the redundant “AM/PM” label
Mine on Linux mint was set to 12 hour and i wanted 24 hour time. In my kde 4. Found it in Locale under System Setting. Thanks for the tip. Kim