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This is primarily for Windows 7, but I work in multiple versions and would happy to be able to do it in as many of them as possible. Currently, when I open Explorer and look at a list of files, the date modified column shows something like:

09/18/2013 10:03

I would like it to display:

09/18/2013 10:03:42

I've tried changing the region and language settings for the short time format from HH:mm to HH:mm:ss, but it says it ignores seconds for that. Does that mean I'm just out of luck? And again, I'd like to be able to do this in any other previous versions of Windows too. It's useful for me as a developer to be able to see the seconds in a lot of situations.

Minor clarification: I did find this question and answer, which helped me to improve the file properties display, but I wanted to be able to view the full timestamp for all the files in a folder at once, instead of individually.

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Joe M
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  • I'm guessing your best bet is to use Powershell (as described in your link)... – Doktoro Reichard Sep 18 '13 at 15:23
  • The question you linked has answers to your question (look at the answers other than the accepted one). You can't do it natively, but there are a few alternatives suggested. Did you try any of those? – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 Sep 18 '13 at 15:30
  • Yes, I was looking for a native solution. Most of those answers are still just showing individual file timestamps. The closest to a good solution is the `forfiles` answer, but it's not convenient because the results aren't formatted or sortable. – Joe M Sep 18 '13 at 16:26
  • You could pipe those results to a text file. Assuming you had Excel (or any other spreadsheet software by that matter) you could then sort them. The Details folder view may be what you would *ideally* want but that has the same problem. Have you tried to use a different file manager? – Doktoro Reichard Sep 18 '13 at 19:04
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    Which idiot developer in MS decided they can conveniently and silently strip `ss` from the time format string even if the user is manually asking for it??? If I don't want the seconds to show, I can remove it from the string myself! – ADTC Oct 28 '13 at 06:51
  • This is not possible with Windows Explorer, but you may look at an alternative file manager, which will have the advantage of working in all your environments. See for example the article [Best Free File Manager](https://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-file-manager.htm) for a list of possible products with reviews. – harrymc Nov 20 '18 at 19:48
  • This can be done with a simple C program. If you want I can provide the source code. – Biswapriyo Nov 21 '18 at 17:13

2 Answers2

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Unfortunately, Microsoft has blocked all possibilities for displaying the seconds.

Windows Explorer now ignores any such specification coming from the system date format, and this is done on the code-level, so any fix will need to directly patch the binary explorer.exe, which is not recommended.

On the other hand, Microsoft has also decided to cancel the possibility for Explorer add-ons to create new columns (link), so even that way is now blocked, or such a solution would have surely existed by now.

There is simply no solution possible when using Windows Explorer, so you need to turn to third-party products, of which there is a large choice available.

See the article Best Free File Manager for a whole list of such alternatives to Explorer, with reviews. There are too many to list here, not only since product recommendations are not allowed on our site, but since choosing one over the others is more a matter of personal preference.

Using a third-party product will also solve the problem for all Windows versions. Even where installation is impossible, quite a number of these products are also available as a portable app that you may carry around with you.

harrymc
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  • A newly-free product is [Altap Salamander Freeware](https://www.altap.cz/). – harrymc Apr 05 '20 at 08:56
  • Thank you for reminding me that I have [Total Commander](https://www.ghisler.com/) installed - _Swiss know how to do s**t_. – MeSo2 Jul 06 '23 at 01:08
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This is how easy Total Commander makes it.

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