Submit Hint Search The Forums LinksStatsPollsHeadlinesRSS
14,000 hints and counting!

Change iPhoto2's roll date display format Apps
With the introduction iPhoto 2 I was a little frustrated to note that the Rolls date format used in the Photo Library was set at MM/DD/YY and does not use the default system format. This hint will thus give a brief and simple method of changing the date format into DD/MM/YY, useful primarily for British or Australian users.
  1. Control-click on iPhoto, click on "Show Package Contents" and locate Contents -> Resources -> English.lproj -> Localizable.strings
  2. Back this file up if you like, then double click on it. The file should open in text edit.
  3. Scroll down to just beyond 75% of the way down the page, and look for the heading // Date/time formatting.
  4. You should see beneath that DateShortFormat = "%m/%d/%y"; // Used for rolls
  5. To change the format into DD/MM/YY, simply change %m into %d and vice versa. The string should now read: DateShortFormat = "%d/%m/%y"; // Used for rolls
  6. To use another date format, visit this page at about.com which lists all the UNIX date and time commands which can be used in any combination you like. [robg adds: or type man strftime in the Terminal...
  7. Simply save the file and check to see if it works in iPhoto.
For those REALLY pedantic users, like myself, why not change "Trash" to "Wastebasket" and hearken back to the good old days of a localised British system? Just about half way down the same file look for // Trash titles, change "Move to Trash" into "Move to Wastebasket" and "Trash" into "Wastebasket".

Warning: When editing strings, make sure you only edit text within quotation marks. Hope this helps someone!
    •    
  • Currently 1.00 / 5
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  (1 vote cast)
 
[4,127 views]  

Change iPhoto2's roll date display format | 5 comments | Create New Account
Click here to return to the 'Change iPhoto2's roll date display format' hint
The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. This site is not responsible for what they say.
Change iPhoto2's roll date display format
Authored by: toontra on Feb 26, '03 10:41:32AM

Thanks nockely, this works a treat. To those of us Brits who will NEVER get used to putting the month before the day this is a real help. Cheers.



[ Reply to This | # ]
Change iPhoto2's roll date display format
Authored by: SergeWC on Feb 26, '03 11:20:03AM

Brits, Australians... and everybody in the world too. Except the Americans of course.

signed... a Canadian



[ Reply to This | # ]
I agree, but...
Authored by: urcindalo on Feb 26, '03 11:24:51AM

I agree.

But one little correction: a canadian is also an american, because an american is whoever comes from the american continent, which goes from Alaska to Argentina.

---
urcindalo
Almería, SPAIN
-----------------
Dual G4/450, 2 Gb RAM, 20 Gb HD, DVD-RAM
ATI Radeon 32 Mb
Adaptec 2930U SCSI card
External USB/SCSI ORB drive



[ Reply to This | # ]
Change iPhoto2's roll date display format
Authored by: JKT on Feb 26, '03 11:11:02AM

Thank you!

FWIW, this can also be done in Mail as well - open the Mail.app>Contents>Resaources>English.lproj>Localisable.strings file and search for Date - in this case the string is "%m/%e/%y" where %e represents the day - swap it with %m (or %M or %b or %B) in all the Date strings and you will have the correct date format in Mail too.

However, don't forget to send feedback to Apple about this stupid "bug" in all their apps.

---
iMacDV 400MHz, sl DVD-ROM, 10.2.4, 640MB RAM



[ Reply to This | # ]
Change iPhoto2's roll date display format
Authored by: b3uk on Feb 26, '03 12:55:02PM

Woo! This one was annoying me for ages. Colour me in your favour ;-) Thank you!

---
"Do it now. Today will be yesterday tomorrow"
- Talking Moose



[ Reply to This | # ]