Discord timestamps: how the codes work and how to make one

The code has three parts inside angle brackets: t: marks it as a timestamp, then comes the Unix time in seconds, then an optional colon and style letter. Discord's message formatting docs say timestamps "are expressed in seconds" and show "in the user's timezone and locale." Leave the letter off, as in <t:1796410800>, and Discord uses the f style.

The letter is case sensitive, so t and T give different results. These are the nine styles, with the names Discord's docs give them:

• t, short time: hours and minutes.
• T, medium time: hours, minutes and seconds.
• d, short date: the date in digits.
• D, long date: the date with the month written out.
• f, long date, short time: the long date plus hours and minutes. This is the default.
• F, full date, short time: the same, with the weekday in front.
• s, short date, short time: the date in digits plus hours and minutes.
• S, short date, medium time: the date in digits plus hours, minutes and seconds.
• R, relative time: how far off the moment is, like "in 3 days" or "2 hours ago".

The s and S styles are the newest two. Many guides and bot libraries still list only seven, and an app that's out of date may not know them yet. Send yourself a test message before you use one for an event.

Here's a worked example. Say you host a game night at 20:00 Amsterdam time on Friday, December 4, 2026. That's 19:00 UTC, or Unix time 1796410800, so the announcement reads:

Game night starts <t:1796410800:F> (<t:1796410800:R>)

Every reader's app starts from that one number and lands on its own clock:

• Amsterdam: Friday, December 4, 2026 at 20:00
• New York: Friday, December 4, 2026 at 14:00
• Kolkata: Saturday, December 5, 2026 at 00:30

The reader in Kolkata sees Saturday, because the start falls after midnight there. Post the time as plain text and that reader has to catch the day change on their own. The code does it for them.

The reader's language changes how the moment is written, not which moment it is. With English (US), the F style in New York reads Friday, December 4, 2026 at 2:00 PM. Other languages change the word order, the month names and whether the clock uses AM and PM. The R part counts from the moment someone reads the message, so it says something different the day before than an hour before.

This works because the message only holds the number. Each reader's app turns it into a date on their own device, with that device's time zone. The writer never needs to know where anyone lives. The flip side: a reader whose device is set to the wrong zone sees the wrong clock, and nothing in the message can fix that.

To make a code, you need the moment in Unix seconds. The Unix Timestamp Converter does that step. Pick the date and time in its Date & Time field, as your own clock shows it, and the Discord Timestamps card lists all nine codes with a preview and a copy button. You can also paste a timestamp you already have. In JavaScript, Math.floor(Date.now() / 1000) gives the current time in seconds, and the current timestamp page covers other languages.

Keep the number in seconds. A milliseconds value, the kind Date.now() returns, has 13 digits instead of 10, and read as seconds it points to the year 58895. If a code shows a date that's wildly off, count the digits first. The seconds vs milliseconds page shows how to tell the two apart.

A code points to one moment, so a weekly event needs a new code each week. That matters around daylight saving changes. Amsterdam is UTC+1 in December and UTC+2 in June, so the same 20:00 start is a different Unix time once the clocks change, and an old code would be an hour off.