How to add a custom timezone clock to an XFCE panel?

Question

My local time is CET (Prague, EU), I also need to see UTC and, some times, MSK time. Can I add multiple clocks with different zones to a panel in XFCE? I know how to add multiple clocks, actually, but how to customize time zone of each of them?

Answer 1

It's possible to display multiple timezones by using multiple applets of the Orage Clock Panel.

Under Orage properties (right click on the clock -> properties) there is a button next to 'set timezone to:' labeled Open. Clicking that button will bring up a window that allows you to select which timezone you want that applet to use.

Each applet will use the timezone you set it for.

by the way, I noticed you state you use Arch on your profile... Orage isn't installed with the base xfce package under Arch-Linux... it is part of the xfce4-goodies meta-package:

$ pacman -Ss xfce4-goodies | grep orage

extra/orage 4.8.3-1 (xfce4-goodies) [installed]

Answer 2

To change timezone in the xfce4 panel clock plugin check first the properties:

xfconf-query -c xfce4-panel --list

There is a property i.e. /plugins/plugin-5/timezone. (plugin5 may differ)

To change the timezone run:

xfconf-query -c xfce4-panel -p "/plugins/plugin-5/timezone" -s "Europe/Berlin"

Answer 3

According to Wikipedia, Orage can do this

It also includes a panel clock plugin and an international clock application capable of simultaneously showing clocks from several different time zones.

...almost, with its "Global Time" application which...

[...] shows time from any timezone. It can show several clocks at once and contains handy feature to adjust time. [...] Global time can be invoked from orageclock panel plugin by clicking middle button (=button 2) and it hides with the next click.

But I cannot find anything about this feature inside an applet...

Answer 4

You can add a Clock to the xfce4-panel (right click, Panel > Add New Items…, Clock), then right-click on the new clock, select Properties, and configure it with a different time zone:

In this example, I've chosen India Standard Time (IST, Asia/Calcutta). With the Digital Layout, it is smaller text, so you can give it a second row. I've used %H:%M%n%Z here to display hours:minutes, a line break, and the time zone name. (I'd love for XFCE to support colored emojis including the international flags so I could just paste 🇮🇳 in there…)

Here is the corner of my panel, featuring clocks for Pacific US, Eastern US (this is my time zone, so it uses the LCD Layout to make it larger), UTC, Eastern European (Summer) Time, and Indian Standard Time:

The full time zone names for Prague and Moscow are Europe/Prague and Europe/Moscow. UTC is Universal. There is a bug in XFCE that removes any setting that you don't modify when you open up the properties, so don't be surprised to see the tooltip and/or formatting vanish when you open it up. Just open it again and put that information back in.

Answer 5

Adding new panels it is possible to add new clocks to this different panels.

There are three simple ways to get four shapes (or more) of clocks with the times of Prague, UTC and MSK.

This image shows them:

The first is with the XFCE clock applet, it allows analog (and some other formats) but all clocks will have one color.

The other three are built with Orage. One is a panel with three Orage applets and the panel in horizontal, the third is also Orage with the panel in vertical and the fourth is the Global time window which keeps the window decorations around with title and some other icons. All Orage samples are text based (no analog) but allow individual colors.

You can choose to build any of them. Ask if instructions are needed.

Tip: The clock text formats are %R %n %P %n %Z.

Answer 6

This page indicates:

"Global time can be invoked from orageclock panel plugin by clicking middle button (=button 2) and it hides with the next click."