Bring back the seconds to your Windows 11 tray — on click.
In Windows 11, Microsoft removed a very simple but useful feature: clicking on the system clock in the tray no longer shows the clock with seconds ticking in real time. Nobody has any idea why they would do that (except, perhaps, their ignorance) but people really miss it:
Yes, there is a way to add seconds to the Windows clock right in the system tray (so you always see them, even without clicking), but as you can see from the discussions above, not everyone wants that — seconds are usually needed in a specific moment, not always. Plus, it may be buggy or resource-greedy.
Hence, this simple utility brings back the ability to “click in tray and see seconds” to your Windows 11 — without bloating you with features you likely don’t need, which more advanced programs usually include.
- Extremely lightweight: ≈200 KB single
.exefile - Minimal CPU & memory footprint: uses 8 MB of RAM and nearly zero CPU while in the background
- Click the tray icon and see the
HH:mm:ssticking in real time - Dark/light theme auto-detect
- Resizable, drag-to-move, double-click to maximize/unmaximize (looks like a full-screen clock, supports any aspect ratio display, even vertical)
- Remembers last position/size
- Popup is "always-on-top" when activated
- Make sure you have the .NET Desktop Runtime 8 installed (you can check by running
dotnet --list-runtimesin CMD — must be version 8.x.x, not 6, 7, or 9). If not, install it — it's just a 50 MB download and many other apps use it. - Download the
Win11Seconds.exefile from the latest release. - Run it. Sit tight. The icon appears in your Windows 11 tray in a second. Now click it to see the seconds!
If you see the
Windows protected your PCwarning, that's okay (see the Dev section below to compile your own .exe if you don't trust this file). Just click More info > Run anyway.
Or you can right-click the .exe > Properties (General) > Unblock.
Optionally, to make the program auto-start with Windows, add a shortcut to the file in one of these folders:
%userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup(Win+R →shell:startup) — for your user only%ProgramData%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup(Win+R →shell:common startup) — for all users
- Left-click tray icon: Show/hide popup clock (with seconds)
- Double-click popup clock: Maximize/Unmaximize
- Right-click tray icon or popup clock: Show context menu
- Hover over the top right corner of the popup clock: Show "Close" button
- If something doesn't work, make sure .NET Desktop Runtime 8 is installed and that your Windows 11 installation is up to date.
- If you have any problems, let me know by creating issue
- Install the .NET SDK (version 8 LTS)
# clone repo and navigate to it
# to start program
dotnet run
# to create .exe file
dotnet publish -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained=false /p:PublishSingleFile=true