Hello team, i want modify the post data format to YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm Modifying in frontend javascript doesn’t seem reasonable 1.Can I use a theme to override this time? 2.how can i modify this in the email too(now it only display data)

All the date formats are available to customize along with other text. Check out this guide: [image] Customize text in Discourse Site Management bookmark This is a guide for customizing text in Discourse via the admin interface, enabling changes to various UI elements. person_raising_hand Required user level: Administrator In Discourse, you can customize all of the text via the admin interface. This can be useful for tailoring the user experience to better fit the particular tone or branding of your community. Summary This guide will cover: Accessing the text customization interface Editing text strings Identifying translatio…

thanks for your reply, David I saw this custom setting, but it seems that I don’t find it here. I want to display the time format of all posts as absolute time. For example, the current my topic post ‘3h’ is displayed as ‘12 May 17:33’ [The image contains a text field labeled "Y-MM-DD HH:mm" and a blue-bordered box with the text "3h" next to a pen icon, indicating a duration or time entry. (Captioned by AI)] do you know what is the best way for me to change all post data to the YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm format, even it post in some minutes

Ah I see! In that case, you could try changing the “relative date duration” site setting. relative_date_duration: Number of days after posting where post dates will be shown as relative (7d) instead of absolute (20 Feb). So I think for your case, you would set it to 0

yes, I have set it to 0, but it still doesn’t take effect now. Does it take some time or do I need to rake posts:rebake like we do after change domain?

It should only need a page refresh to take effect. Has it made any difference at all? What do your post dates look like now?

i have full refresh page, it still display ‘36’ [The image shows a section of a blueprint or schematic with the heading "A Mini PCle Schematic" and a drawing instrument icon, accompanied by the measurement "36m". (Captioned by AI)] and the setting is 0 [The image shows a filter setting where post dates are displayed as relative time, specifying that new posts will be shown as "x days ago" instead of using absolute dates, with an example of using "7 days" instead of "20 Feb". (Captioned by AI)]

Hmm, it seems like dates which are less than 23.5 hours ago are always shown as relative, regardless of that setting: app/assets/javascripts/discourse/app/lib/formatter.js 5883085af case distanceInMinutes >= 0 && distanceInMinutes = 45 && distanceInMinutes = 90 && distanceInMinutes <= 1409: formatted = t("about_x_hours", { count: Math.round(distanceInMinutes / 60.0), }); break; case siteSettings.relative_date_duration === 0 && distanceInMinutes <= 525599: formatted = shortDateNoYear(date); break; So, your change to the setting will have applied to posts more than 1 day old. But it doesn’t look like we currently have a way to change the behaviour of things which are less than a day old.

i see this file discourse-main/app/assets/javascripts/discourse/app/components/post/meta-data/date.gjs is this the correct template, can i change it by a theme component?

No, you cannot override .gjs templates, unfortunately (intended to improve and encourage stability of overrides)

Welcome back. @aksoforever! How are you getting on with this? Can you tell us some more about your use case? Why would you want to impose such long, absolute dates on your members? The “time ago” dates are quite friendly on the eye and convey the information you need to know how old a post is. Mousing over it shows you the explicit timestamp.

How to change the post data from relative data to absolute

Product Support

david (David Taylor) May 12, 2025, 9:37am 3

All the date formats are available to customize along with other text. Check out this guide:

Topic		Replies	Views
Change Timestamp Format to Actual Date and Time Product Support	5	1641	October 25, 2021
How to rewrite post dates for certain categories (narrative project roleplay) Development	2	155	June 14, 2025
Show timestamp posted for topic post Product Support	1	134	January 3, 2026
Changing post date format Product Support	6	1715	August 14, 2019
How to make post timestamps show seconds? Product Support	4	1274	April 5, 2024

How to change the post data from relative data to absolute

Related topics