If you want to change the time format to German , you must install the German language from the Language Support and then set the "Regional Settings" in German
![languagesupport](https://i.stack.imgur.com/JYVXw.png)
![languagesupport2](https://i.stack.imgur.com/rHCLE.png)
If you want to change the format in Date and Time , you must install dconf-tool . From terminal do
sudo apt-get install dconf-tools
Find it through Dash by writing dconf open it and goto Com > Canonical > Indicator > Datetime and from there you can change the format.
![Date-time](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ad8O0.png)
Logout and Login for changes to take effect.
The default format is %l:%M %p
, you will change it to %M:%l %p
![datetime](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZlizX.png)
You can get back the full date by recompiling nautilus:
sudo apt-get build-dep nautilus
sudo apt-get install quilt
export QUILT_PATCHES=debian/patches
apt-get source nautilus
cd nautilus*
quilt new 999_full_dates.patch
quilt edit libnautilus-private/nautilus-column-utilities.c
Change line 77 from
"attribute", "date_modified",
to
"attribute", "date_modified_full",
Rebuild and install modified package:
quilt refresh
fakeroot dpkg-buildpackage
cd ..
killall nautilus
sudo dpkg -i nautilus_*.deb
nautilus &
As always, you have to perform these steps every time there is an update for nautilus in Ubuntu.
Now, a full analysis of the problem:
The actual patch which caused this change is this one.
The function nautilus_file_get_date_as_string
gains an extra gboolean parameter "compact" - when true the abbreviated date is returned.
This function is never called directly - it is accessed through the wrapper function nautilus_file_get_string_attribute_q
. This function takes attribute parameters like "date_modified". To accommodate the new signature of nautilus_file_get_date_as_string
a new attribute is added "date_modified_full
". After this change, any code in nautilus which uses the file date string will get the abbreviated date.
Finally, the file properties dialog is updated to use "date_modified_full" attribute.
So in order to have nautilus display the full date in list view, it is only necessary to change one line of code: in libnautilus-private/nautilus-column-utilities.c, line 77 from "date_modified" to "date_modified_full".
A slightly more useful patch could add a new column type which would show the full date, making this an optional feature, and only add 10 lines of code.
Best Answer
There is a vacuum for changing date format of the date columns in Ubuntu 14.04, 16.04, 18.04 and following (18.10, 19.04, 19.10, 20.04). (Neither dconf, gconf nor gsettings works, there is no date-format setting option.)
There are some workarounds, see How to show full date and time in Nautilus/Files 3.6+ list view.
Bug reports are opened on Gitlab and Bugzilla, please add your comments or help if you have the expertise as there has been no progress for years!
With other problems, e.g. Bug #1152226 “nautilus no longer remembers view per directory” and View mode setting should persistent for each directory, Nautilus is more and more user-UNfriendly and a switch to Nemo or other alternative file browser like Thunar is to consider.
ONLY Ubuntu 17.04 & 17.10 in a terminal (not in 18.04):
gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.preferences date-format iso
gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.preferences date-format locale
gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.preferences date-format informal
Credit goes to Pablo Bianchi, see his comment.
For Caja (Mate 17.04): See other answer
Only works up to Ubuntu 12.04, maybe 13.10 (not 14.04 and 16.04):
Install dconf-editor (available in the normal repository), navigate to:
org>gnome>nautilus>preferences>date-format, then click on the field "value" beside the date-format field and a drop-down menu appears with the three choices:
I chose iso and am happy.