How to Show Day of Week in Top bar of Ubuntu 20.04 /21.10

Ubuntu by default displays only date and time in the center of top-bar. Users have to click on it to see which day is today in drop-down calendar.

To make life easier, you may configure the GNOME desktop to show the day of week in top-bar. And, here’s how.

Option 1: Single command to Display Weekday in Top bar:

For those familiar with Linux commands, press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, copy and paste the command below and hit run:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface clock-show-weekday true

After that, it shows the weekday name in short (e.g., Sat and Sun) immediately.

Option 2: Toggle Weekday Display via Gnome Tweaks:

The must have GNOME configuration tool ‘Gnome Tweaks’ provides the toggle option for those hate Linux commands. If you don’t have it, search for and install via Ubuntu Software:

Next, press Super/Windows key to bring up activities overview screen. Then search for and launch Gnome Tweaks. Navigate to “Top Bar” from left pane, and then you’ll see the option to toggle “Weekday”.

As you may know, the advanced configuration tool “Dconf Editor” also provides a graphical option to toggle this function at “org/gnome/desktop/interface”, though the previous two methods is good enough to do the trick.

That’s all. A quick glance at screen top now tell you the day of week. Enjoy!