Change Date and Time in a Citrix Session

Last Updated on October 9, 2021

How to change Date and Time in a Citrix Session is a very frequently asked question. Changing the Date and Time may be required for a single application, all applications published from a Delivery Group, all desktops in a Delivery Group, or for a set of users.

Change Date and Time in a Citrix Session

Multiple methods are available to change the date and time in a Citrix Session.

Method 1

Apply “Use local time of client” Citrix Policy and filter it with a user group or a Delivery Group. Using this policy is a two-step process. First, you need to apply this policy with value set to “Use Client Time Zone” and then configure “Allow Time zone Redirection” setting in a GPO. It is important to understand that if the type of the VDA is Desktop OS then there is no need to do any of this because by default Desktop OS type of VDA uses Client Time zone. The default setting of a Server OS type of VDA is “Use Server Time Zone” that is why you have to change the default behavior using this method.

1. Edit an existing Citrix policy or create a new one.
2. Select Use Local Time of Client (ICA/Time Zone Control) setting and change the value to Use Client Time Zone.

3. Click on OK and click on Next. Assign appropriate filter or select All objects in the site at the top and click on next. Click on Finish.

4. Open GPMC and edit a GPO that applies to Citrix servers in concern. Assuming that loopback processing is enabled with any mode.
5. Go to Computer Configuration/Administrative Templates/Windows components/Remote Desktop Services/Remote Desktop Session Host/Device and Resource Redirection and enable Allow time zone redirection.

6. Alternatively, fifth step can be accomplished by creating a registry key that you can push through Group Policy Preference (GPP).

Conclusion – By applying Use Local time of client setting through Citrix Policy and Allow time zone redirection through GPO, users’ local time zone can be redirected to their Citrix Sessions.

Method 2

Create a batch file with following code. Set-Culture –cultureInfo en-gb sets the culture for the current user account to English (United Kingdom). Once the culture is changed, start “” “EXCEL.exe” will open Microsoft Excel. For any other application, replace the path to the executable in 3^rd line and its name in 4^th line. Culture is known as a locale for unmanaged code development. CultureInfo includes information such as names for the culture, the writing system, the calendar used, the sort order of strings, and formatting for dates and numbers. For Germany, you can write de-DE and for USA, write en-US. Get the list of language codes from here.

@echo off
Powershell -Command Set-Culture -CultureInfo en-gb
cd C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office16
start “” “EXCEL.exe”

Save the batch file on all Citrix servers from where the application is supposed to be published. While adding the application to the delivery group, browse the batch file in “Path to the executable file” field.

Conclusion – By using Method 2, Date and Time can be changed per application.

Method 3

If you want to change the time and date in a Citrix session for a particular set of users on certain computer objects, use Regional Options with the help of Group Policy Preference (GPP) and Security filtering (or item-level targeting). This method can also be used to change the date and time for all users logging in to all servers that are part of the OU to which the GPP will apply.

If a user was to change the date and time him/herself, he/she would do it by either going to Control Panel > Region or by going to Start Menu > Settings > Time and Language > Date & time > Date, time & regional formatting (Related Settings).

Please remember that Date & Time settings are per-user but Time zone and System Locale (code page) settings are system-wide. Dennis Span has written a very informative article about changing Time zone using Group Policy Preference (Registry), tzutil.exe and PowerShell, and changing System locale using Group policy preference.

If an Administrator was to change the date and time him/herself, he/she would do it by going to Start Menu > Settings > Time and Language > Date & time.

1. Create a new GPO (or edit an existing one) and link it to the OU that contains Citrix VDAs (Citrix Application Server or Citrix XenApp Servers or Citrix Virtual Apps Servers). Ensure that Loopback Processing is enabled. This is important because Regional Options is a user setting and this GPO is supposed to be linked to a Computer OU.
2. Go to User Configuration/Preferences/Control Panel Settings/Regional Options.
3. Right Click, select New and then click Regional Options.

4. Select the user locale from the drop-down menu, English (United Kingdom) for example. Press F5 to enable this. Notice that dashed red underline will turn green. This will also change the corresponding values in Numbers, Currency, Time and Date tabs. For example, the measurement system will change to Metric in Numbers tab, currency symbol will change to Pound in Currency tab, time format will change to 24-hour notation (HH:mm:ss) in Time tab, and short date format will change to dd/MM/yyyy.

5. The default number of digits after decimal for English (United Kingdom) user locale is 2. Users may demand that to be changed to 3 or maybe 4. To accomplish this, switch to the Numbers tab and select 3 or 4 from the drop-down menu. Again, press F5 to enable it. There are plenty of other options in Numbers tab that you might want to explore.

6. The default time format for English (United Kingdom) is HH:mm:ss, which translates to 14:55:33 for example. It’s a 24-hour format. Users may demand to change it to a 12-hour format (AM/PM). To do that, switch to Time tab and change the time format to h:mm:ss tt (or hh:mm:ss tt). Again, press F5 to enable it.
   • Capital H means 24-hours.
   • Double capital HH mean 24-hour format with leading zeros.
   • Small h means 12-hours.
   • Double small hh mean 12-hour format with leading zeros.
   • m means minute, mm means minutes with leading zeros.
   • s means second, ss means seconds with leading zeros.
   • t means A or P, tt means AM or PM.

7. Similarly, short and long dates can be changed to a different format from their default ones (as a result of selecting User locale or region). Don’t forget to press F5.

8. If this is going to be a dedicated GPO for Date & Time settings then you have two options to target a set of users – Use security filtering (step 16 onwards) or Item-level targeting (recommended). If the GPO will also contain other settings then Item-level targeting is the best choice.
9. Switch to Common tab. No matter what you decide to use; security filtering or Item-level targeting, make sure Run in logged-on user’s security context is selected. Select Item-level targeting and click Targeting… button.

10. Click New Item and select Security Group.

11. Click the browse button (three dots […]) in lower portion of the window. Provide the name of a user group and click OK.

12. Click OK one more timeto come back to the Common tab.

13. Click Apply and OK.

14. Back to Regional Options.

15. Feel free to rename the Regional Options setting to something relevant.

16. About Security filtering – Select the Scope tab of the GPO. Click Add in Security Filtering section at the lower portion. Provide the name of user group and click OK.

17. Select Authenticated Users and click Remove. If you don’t remote Authenticated users from here then GPO settings will apply to all users. Click OK on the warning message.

18. Read the warning message carefully and click OK. This will be taken care in next step onwards.

19. Go to Delegation tab and click Add.

20. Add Authenticated users or Domain Computers. Click OK.

21. A new window shall open up. Select Read in Permissions field. Click OK.

22. If desired or required, computer objects can also be added to Security Filtering. Alternatively, use WMI filtering.

Conclusion – With the help of Method 3, Date and Time can be changed for a particular set of users or all users, and certain computer objects.

See Saved Credentials do not persist in Citrix Session if you are interested.