If you’ve found yourself double guessing and still not being sure what date you’re actually looking at in the vSphere client then this post is for you. We’re going to change the US date format MM/DD/YYY to DD/MM/YYYY in Chrome but it also works for Firefox and Edge too.

The default setting in when logged in to a vCenter for Tasks or Logs is to show the date as MM/DD/YYYY. If you find yourself looking for something on or before the 12th of the month in the UK for example, we need to add the extra little step of remembering what format we’re looking at, not the end of the world but it can be changed and doesn’t seem documented by VMware or many accessible articles online

Click your username top right of the Client > Select Preferences

Select the Language Tab > Confirm the Browser Default is selected

Open Chrome > select More (the three stacked dots or lines depending on your version) > select Settings > Scroll to the bottom and Open the Advanced > Select Language. If English (United Kingdom) is not already listed then Click Add Languages

Search for English > Select English (United Kingdom) > Click Add

Click More (three stacked dots) > Click Move to the top > Select the checkbox to Display Google Chrome in this Language

Click Relaunch. This will relaunch Chrome with your new settings but your tabs should remain in place

Go back to the vSphere Client > Click your username top right of the Client again > Select Preferences

Select the radio button to Specify a language > Choose English > Click Save. Your Client session will reload but you’ll see this has not changed the date format just yet

Navigate back in to the same Language tab > Select Browser Default > Click Save. Your Client session will reload again

You’ll now find Tasks and Logs are in the correct format and we can use the brain power we used on converting the dates on something more awesome in vSphere 🙂