formatDate

Writes a time as text: a date pattern, or a keyword such as long, iso, unix or relative.

Details #

formatDate(time, format?, zone?) takes one to three arguments and returns text.

time is a time in seconds since 1970, or text parseDate can read, so formatDate("next friday", "long") works.
format is a date pattern such as yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm, or a keyword: short, medium, long, full (the date), time, datetime (the default: medium date and short time), iso (with the offset), isodate (yyyy-MM-dd), unix (whole seconds) and relative (in 3 days, 2 hours ago).
zone is a city or abbreviation (Tokyo, PST) or a time zone identifier. The default is this Mac's zone.

Takes 1 to 3 arguments. {{ formatDate(text, b?, c?) }}

formatDate(now(), "yyyy-MM-dd")

→ 2026-01-15

formatDate(now(), "iso", "Tokyo")

→ 2026-01-16T00:30:00+09:00

formatDate(triggerTime(), "relative")

→ in 0 seconds

An unknown zone is an error: formatDate() doesn't know the time zone 'Narnia'.
Month and day names follow this Mac's language.