Time Ago Formatter

How to use

1. 1Type a target date into the Target date field. ISO 8601, RFC 2822, the keyword now, and Unix timestamps (seconds or milliseconds) all work. Use the quick presets to jump to common offsets like 5 minutes ago or in 1 year.
2. 2Choose a locale. Pick from the list or check Use a custom BCP-47 tag to type one yourself (for example fr-CA or zh-Hant-HK).
3. 3Pick a style and numeric mode. Long for 3 months ago, short for 3 mo. ago, narrow for 3mo. Auto numeric allows words like yesterday and tomorrow; always numeric forces a number.
4. 4Leave the reference set to Live now for a result that ticks every second, or pin a custom moment to freeze the result for screenshots and tests.
5. 5Read the relative result at the top, browse the unit ladder to see the same diff at every Intl unit, and use the copy buttons to grab the result string or the full summary.

About this tool

Time Ago Formatter renders any timestamp as the kind of relative time string you see in feeds, comment threads, and dashboards: 5 minutes ago, in 2 hours, yesterday, last month, in 3 years. The result is produced by your browser's built-in Intl.RelativeTimeFormat, so it follows the plural rules, abbreviation conventions, and word order of the chosen locale: English emits 3 months ago, Spanish emits hace 3 meses, Japanese emits 3 か月前 and omits the leading number for yesterday and tomorrow, Arabic switches direction, and so on. Pick from a curated BCP-47 locale list (English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Polish, Russian, Turkish, Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, and more) or type a custom tag like fr-CA, ar-EG, or zh-Hant-HK. Three styles are supported: long (3 months ago), short (3 mo. ago), and narrow (3mo) so the same value can fit a generous body paragraph or a dense table cell. Numeric mode toggles between auto (which prefers words like yesterday, today, tomorrow when they apply) and always (which keeps everything numeric for tighter machine-parseable output). The reference moment, what the result is compared against, defaults to a live now that ticks every second; pin it to a specific timestamp to freeze the output for screenshots, tests, or reproducible documentation. Target dates accept ISO 8601 (2024-09-15T12:00:00Z), RFC 2822, the literal keyword now, and raw Unix timestamps in seconds or milliseconds; the parser detects whether a plain integer is seconds or milliseconds by digit count. The page also doubles as a date inspector: every result shows the absolute target in ISO, RFC 2822, locale-aware long, and locale-aware short forms alongside the Unix seconds value. A unit ladder renders the same diff at every Intl.RelativeTimeFormat unit (year, quarter, month, week, day, hour, minute, second) so you can switch to a coarser or finer view than the auto-picked one, and a numeric breakdown table shows both the floored value used for relative formatting and the exact fractional value so you can see exactly why a 49 hour gap reports as 2 days ago rather than yesterday. All math is local and your input never leaves the browser.

Free to use. Works in your browser. No signup, no login.