Discord timestamp generator

How Discord timestamps work

A timestamp tag is a Unix time — the number of seconds since the start of 1970, in UTC — wrapped in <t: and >, with an optional letter at the end choosing how it is shown. Discord replaces the tag with a date in each reader's own time zone and language, so "the event starts at <t:1767225600:t>" means the same moment to someone in London and someone in Sydney, shown to each in their local time.

The relative style, R, is the one that updates itself: it reads "in 3 hours", then "in 5 minutes", then "2 minutes ago", without the message ever being edited. It is the right choice for countdowns and "last seen" lines.

Tags work in message text, and in the description and field values of an embed. They are not rendered in embed titles, author names or footers, where they appear as the raw tag.

Timestamps from a bot

Both big libraries build the tag for you. In discord.js, the time() helper takes a Date and a style: time(date, TimestampStyles.RelativeTime). In discord.py, discord.utils.format_dt(dt, style="R") does the same with a datetime.

If you build it yourself, the most common mistake is units. JavaScript's Date.now() and getTime() return milliseconds, and Discord wants seconds: divide by 1000 and round down. A tag in milliseconds shows a date tens of thousands of years in the future.