Missing date & time applet from top Unity panel

Question

I like Unity very much. Recently, I installed Compiz manager and Nautilus Elementary also then tried to Play. During some of my playing around, Unity's clock applet has vanished.

I want to make it show the time again. How can I do this?

Because this question is "protected", I can't add this as an answer, so posting it as a comment: Another possible solution in some cases is to make sure your ~/.profile or similar isn't setting something like LANG=C; export LANG... that broke this for me, if I had weekday or date stuff turned on (just time per se it would work). So, I found a way to disable that line of my profile for unity config's run through my .profile, while still setting it normally (per my preference, generally), and that fixed it for me (after logout/in). — lindes, Oct 23 '15 at 19:54

score 293 · Answer 1 · edited Sep 18 '13 at 23:32

293

Having date and time gone on Ubuntu 13.10 beta, after next reboot, this command solves the problem:

killall unity-panel-service

edited Sep 18 '13 at 23:32

Lucio

18,843

answered Sep 18 '13 at 22:43

Maxime

3,049
1
12
3

5

@That's working for me. – gotqn Oct 23 '13 at 16:55
2

Same thing happens to me on about 1/4 of the time I boot and this is a good temporary fix. – Alchitry Oct 28 '13 at 02:04
Had to do "sudo killall unity-panel-service" – Nitish Parkar Jun 16 '14 at 06:53
13

Why is this obvious bug still around after 2 major releases? – alex.p Jun 26 '14 at 18:00
3

Solved it for me in 14 – Yehonatan Tsirolnik Jul 27 '14 at 19:43
7

Solves problem in 14.10. – Daniel Nov 05 '14 at 13:00
Did not directly work for me in 14.04. Instead, I first had to run dpkg-reconfigure as in @Patryk's answer. – Steve Kroon Feb 27 '15 at 05:13
4

solves it for 14.04LTS – Reya276 Jun 12 '15 at 20:05
I had also to /usr/lib/unity/unity-panel-service and compiz --replace see here – Aquarius Power Jan 05 '16 at 18:16
This answer still works in Ubuntu 16.04 – Todd Jul 15 '16 at 16:53
I'm guessing this works as well but @Patyk's answer works without the need to reboot – Rishi Dua Nov 24 '16 at 08:03

score 60 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 02 '14 at 23:17

60

Reinstall indicator-datetime. It should be installed by default, but just in case you have removed it unknowingly, it is best to run the install command again.

sudo apt-get install indicator-datetime

Next, we are going to reconfigure the date time:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure --frontend noninteractive tzdata

Lastly, restart unity.

sudo killall unity-panel-service

answered Jan 02 '14 at 23:17

Patryk

9,146

2

This was the solution that worked for me. Running fully patched Ubuntu 13.10 on 23rd Feb 2014. Thanks! – Kim Feb 23 '14 at 15:50
Yes, it worked. – Kerem Jun 25 '14 at 22:33
1

the last command was sufficient and worked for me on 14.04 – D3L Sep 02 '14 at 02:46
Work very well. – Bonn Jan 24 '15 at 16:15
Thanks, this was the solution for me, too (Ubuntu 14.04). – rplantiko May 25 '15 at 15:36
worked. Ubuntu 14.04 – Rishi Dua Nov 24 '16 at 08:03

score 36 · Answer 3 · edited Jun 12 '20 at 14:37

36

Click the Ubuntu logo in the top-left.
Search for and open "Time and Date".
Open the Clock tab.
Make sure the box "Show a clock in menu bar" is ticked.

Also make sure the package indicator-datetime is installed.

edited Jun 12 '20 at 14:37

Community

1

answered May 30 '11 at 07:46

Nitin Venkatesh

22,221

43

Interestingly enough, when what happens on my machine (13.10) this whole tab is greyed out (albeit "Show a clock" is checked). – Waldir Leoncio Nov 28 '13 at 10:52
22

@WaldirLeoncio when that happens (on 14.04) I found the solution is "killall unity-panel-service". – Stéphane Oct 19 '14 at 18:08
1

Reinstalling indicator-datetime worked for me. I think I accidentally uninstalled it when I removed some evolution packages. – User 1058612 Jan 20 '15 at 17:53
1

Sometimes when ubuntu base is updated and I find that date panel disappears. It will come back when I boot again. But doing what @Stéphane suggested works for me. – eshwar May 06 '15 at 04:47
For me this command worked: pkill -f datetime – Krisztián Balla Apr 21 '17 at 10:28

score 19 · Answer 4 · edited Mar 11 '17 at 19:00

19

Double check that indicator-datetime is installed. Go to terminal and type

sudo apt-get install indicator-datetime

Now log out and then back in.

edited Mar 11 '17 at 19:00

Community

1

answered Oct 18 '11 at 05:24

user28525

199

5

In my case this was the solution. I had actually removed everything related to Evolution including the Evolution Server and somehow that relates to also removing the indicator-datetime. I simply installed all that again and it worked. – Luis Alvarado Mar 18 '12 at 13:40
4

OP's requested comment: instead of logging in and out (which is slow, painful, loses your state, and smells of microsoft), you can kill unity-panel-service using ps -ef | grep unity-panel-service and kill <APPROPRIATE PID> This will then immediately respawn a new panel service which loads the indicator. – Mochan Dec 31 '12 at 00:25
3

Thanks for this, in my case I had it installed but a apt-get purge indicator-datetime and then and install was needed. – squareborg Sep 16 '13 at 12:59

score 6 · Answer 5 · edited Dec 08 '14 at 12:42

6

On my computer, Unity shows word "Time" instead of the real time.

On Ubuntu 11 (and above?) /etc/timezone can't be empty (and it was). This wasn't an issue on previous versions.

To regenerate the TimeZone file just do:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure --frontend noninteractive tzdata

It works for me.

edited Dec 08 '14 at 12:42

smhg

113

answered Dec 15 '11 at 12:02

Victor Fariña

61
1
1

score 1 · Answer 6 · answered May 30 '11 at 07:47

1

If that doesn't work you can try restoring your defaults.

From your unity session, try re-launching unity like this:

unity --reset

answered May 30 '11 at 07:47

thomasmichaelwallace

2,659

score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Mar 27 '13 at 14:29

If you not found Date-Time on panel then try to find out on whether its hide or not. If not then try to find out its installed or not.

If you find that Date-Time not install then you just install it. 1. apt-get install indicator-datetime 2. killall unity-panel-service

You not need to Logoff or reset Unnity. Just check on your Desktop's Right Corner.

Missing date & time applet from top Unity panel

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