Get seconds back in the Mac menu-bar clock

You had a ticking seconds counter in the corner, and now — after a macOS update, or some setting that quietly reset — the clock is back to plain hours and minutes. The option hasn't been removed; it's either switched off or the menu-bar process needs a nudge to redraw it. Two quick checks bring the seconds back.

First, switch the option back on

A major macOS upgrade occasionally resets menu-bar clock preferences to defaults, and since seconds are off by default, that's usually all that happened. Turn it back on:

1. Open System Settings → Control Center.
2. Scroll to the Clock section and click Clock Options.
3. Turn on Display the time with seconds.

In most cases the counter reappears the instant you flip it, and you're done. This is the same option and same location on macOS 13 Ventura, 14 Sonoma and 15 Sequoia — an update may have moved it back to off, but it never moves it somewhere else.

If the toggle looks on but seconds still don't show

Sometimes the switch reads as enabled yet the clock stubbornly shows minutes only. That's a rendering hiccup: the ControlCenter process draws the menu-bar clock, and after an update it can be running with a stale view of your settings. Restart it and it redraws from scratch:

# Force the menu bar to redraw the clock
killall ControlCenter

The menu bar blinks and rebuilds in a second, and the seconds counter should be back. This just relaunches a system helper — it doesn't close your apps or touch your work. If you'd rather not use Terminal, logging out and back in (or a restart) does the same thing more slowly.

Set it from Terminal so it sticks

To be certain both the preference and the display are correct in one shot, write the value explicitly and reload the clock together:

# Re-enable seconds and redraw the clock
defaults write com.apple.menuextra.clock ShowSeconds -bool true
killall ControlCenter

This forces the setting to true regardless of what the update left behind, then repaints the menu bar so it takes effect immediately. If you ever want to remove the seconds again on purpose, reverse it:

# Turn seconds off again
defaults write com.apple.menuextra.clock ShowSeconds -bool false
killall ControlCenter

One habit worth keeping: because big upgrades can reset this preference, it's normal to re-run the enable command (or re-flip the toggle) once after each major macOS version. It's not a bug in your Mac — just the default reasserting itself — and thirty seconds restores your clock every time. If seconds vanished alongside a wrong time or a reset time zone, treat the clock itself as the first thing to fix, since a confused system clock can knock several menu-bar settings loose at once.

If the whole clock is misbehaving

Seconds gone is often the mildest symptom; a wrong time or drifted clock is the one to chase first. See how to fix the wrong time on Mac if the corner shows more than just missing seconds.