By default, Windows 10 only displays the hour and minute in the taskbar clock. This is good enough for most people most of the time… but if you’re doing something time-sensitive – like trying to buy concert tickets or rare records on Virtual Record Store Day – you might need to know the time down to the EXACT SECOND.
For years I’ve used an app called TimeSync to synchronize my various computers. Some computers just don’t keep time that well, and other times you might want to sync the computer more often than Windows’ once a week default. Because TimeSync shows seconds – and because I already had it downloaded on my computer – I just used that:
But did you know that you can configure Windows 10 to display seconds in the taskbar clock?
Just open REGEDIT.EXE and go to:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced
Right-click on the “Advanced” key in the left pane and select New > DWORD (32-bit) Value. Name the key ShowSecondsInSystemClock and press ENTER. Lastly, double-click the entry you just created and give it the value of 1. You’ll need to reboot or sign out and in for the change to go into effect.
You can undo this in the future by deleting the ShowSecondsInSystemClock key, or you can set its value to 0.