Is the clock within the Windows taskbar in a position to present seconds? Not traditionally, but it surely’s been a debate inside Microsoft for a few years — a debate that has now been put to relaxation with a current replace for Windows 11. Now, you’ll be able to decide to point out seconds in your taskbar’s clock.

With this variation, Windows 11 breaks with an outdated Windows custom. But first issues first.

Windows 11’s taskbar clock now exhibits seconds

After lengthy assessments within the Insider variations of Windows 11, Microsoft has now activated the seconds show within the taskbar clock for all Windows 11 customers with update KB5028185 final week. The possibility to show it on will be present in your Windows settings beneath “Personalization -> Taskbar -> Taskbar behaviors.” Check the field that claims “Show seconds in the taskbar clock” to activate it. When you do, Microsoft warns that the setting “consumes more power.”

Screenshot

Why the taskbar clock in Windows didn’t show seconds till now

As early as 2003, Microsoft mentioned whether or not it might be a good suggestion to have the taskbar clock show seconds along with hours and minutes. This perform was built-in in beta variations of Windows on a trial foundation, however didn’t make it into the ultimate variations. The motive: Especially on weak computer systems with 4 megabytes of RAM, which was nonetheless frequent at the moment, the efficiency of Windows deteriorated significantly when customers had the seconds displayed on the clock. After all, a further 4 kilobytes of priceless reminiscence had been consumed, plus the computing energy wanted to replace the display screen. In line with the developer precept “The fastest code is the one that doesn’t run,” it was determined to not introduce the seconds characteristic in prior variations of Windows.

In Windows 10, the seconds show was lastly added — however not as an possibility in Settings. Instead, customers needed to activate the seconds show through a registry key. This trick was eliminated in Windows 11.

In April 2022, Microsoft developer Raymond Chen revealed a blog post titled “Now that computers have more than 4MB of memory, can we get seconds in the taskbar?” Referencing potential impairment of the general efficiency of Windows 11, Chen spoke out towards the seconds show in his weblog publish, but it surely clearly didn’t cease the characteristic from lastly delivery this time round.

This article was translated from German to English, and initially appeared on pcwelt.de.