How to Display Seconds in the Windows 10 Taskbar Clock

If you are still running Windows 10 and have not made the switch or “upgrade” to Windows 11, then you might be missing out on some new Windows features. Then again Windows 11 took away some of the features we all loved from Windows 10!

One feature that comes standard in Windows 11 is the ability to show seconds in the clock by the system tray. Unfortunately, this is not an option for Windows 10 but it’s still possible to do so. In this article, we will be showing you how to display seconds in the Windows 10 taskbar clock.

If you go to the Windows 10 settings, you can see that you can disable the clock from showing in the system tray but there are no options to enable seconds for the clock.

Even if you go to the Date & time settings, there is not much you can configure from here.

As you can see in the Windows 11 Time & language settings, there is an option to show seconds in the system tray clock.

In order to display seconds in the Windows 10 taskbar clock, we will be using a simple batch file that makes a basic registry change. We have a file to add the seconds to the taskbar clock and then another one to remove the option if you change your mind. You can download the batch files here.

Once you download the batch files, simply unzip the file and you will have a file for each.

Here are the contents of the batch file that will show the seconds in the Windows 10 taskbar clock.

@echo off

 REG ADD “HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced” /V ShowSecondsInSystemClock /T REG_DWORD /D 1 /F

 taskkill /f /im explorer.exe

start explorer.exe

Here are the contents of the batch file to hide the seconds in the taskbar clock.

@echo off

 REG ADD “HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced” /V ShowSecondsInSystemClock /T REG_DWORD /D 0 /F

 taskkill /f /im explorer.exe

start explorer.exe

To make the change, simply double click the Show Seconds Taskbar Clock.bat file. Your screen will most likely flash and you will see your taskbar disappear and reappear since the process involves restarting Windows Explorer. If for some reason the clock is not showing in the taskbar, simply go to the Turn system icons on or off setting and toggle the clock off and back on again.

As you can see in the image below, we can now see the seconds in the taskbar clock.

If you want to reverse the process, simply double click the Show Seconds Taskbar Clock.bat file and you will be back to not having seconds in the clock.

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