The clock in the Windows taskbar does not display seconds. Originally, this was due to the performance impact on a 4MB system of having to keep in memory the code responsible for calculating the time and drawing it. But computers nowadays have lots more than 4MB of memory, so why not bring back the seconds?
Although it’s true that computers nowadays have a lot more than 4MB of memory, bringing back seconds is still not a great idea for performance.
On multi-users systems, like Terminal Server servers, it’s not one taskbar clock that would update once a second. Rather, each user that signs in has their own taskbar clock, that would need to update every second. So once a second, a hundred stacks would get paged in so that a hundred taskbar clocks can repaint. This is generally not a great thing, since it basically means that the system is spending all of its CPU updating clocks.
This is the same reason why, on Terminal Server systems, caret blinking is typically disabled. Blinking a caret at 500ms across a hundred users turns into a lot of wasted CPU. Even updating a hundred clocks once a minute is too much for many systems, and most Terminal Server administrators just disable the taskbar clock entirely.
Okay, but what about systems that aren’t Terminal Server servers? Why can’t my little single-user system show seconds on the clock?
The answer is still performance.
Any periodic activity with a rate faster than one minute incurs the scrutiny of the Windows performance team, because periodic activity prevents the CPU from entering a low-power state. Updating the seconds in the taskbar clock is not essential to the user interface, unlike telling the user where their typing is going to go, or making sure a video plays smoothly. And the recommendation is that inessential periodic timers have a minimum period of one minute, and they should enable timer coalescing to minimize system wake-ups.
This is a late April fools joke, right? "terminal servers"? That is your reasoning? Where Windows 11 is mostly a desktop user OS in most cases? Where just one user is using the computer? And a terminal server is a rare exception? And you take that rare exception as the "normal use case"? To make the user experience horrible WORSE? And give NO OPTION, to let the USER decide what they want? Give back at least a simple working clock widget when you click on the clock, like Windows 10 had.
A clock like this with seconds is missing in Windows...
Assuming that the impact in performance is that significant, I don’t think so because it does not seem to make a difference on win10, but let’s assume that is does, having the option or even that hidden registry for those that want it for some reason would be easy.
This look s more like it messes something else and this is the excuse we are going with. Affecting performance, but something that should not
dont care + what a bad excuse, just give me my feature, Windows 11 is the worst windows I’ve ever used
I just wrote a comment, only for this website to trigger an error 500. Wow even wordpress is to difficult for the Microsoft developer…
So updating the taskbar takes to much resources, yet Windows spends time installing Candy Crush. Not to mention the ads within explorer, the ads in the news widget, the weather updates and so on.
O, and also spending cpu resources of collecting and sending my user data, all of that is afcourse way more important compared to actual functions that the customers want.
This blog sounds more like its poorly written code by the developers of Windows
I use the WinAero Tweaker app to enable seconds in the taskbar clock… so I don’t understand this blog? Showing seconds works?
I used the WinAero Tweaker app to enable seconds in the taskbar clock… so I don’t understand this blog? It works?
Hang on… there is a way to show seconds in the clock, because I used the WinAero Tweaker app to enable it. So, what’s going on?
I have this enabled on my MacBook; I wonder what performance trade-off I’ve made.
I remember it was not CPU time but the bandwidth taken by the RDP traffic (this was important when dial-up modems were still common).