How to get the current time and date in Android?

In this post, we’ll learn how can you get the current time and date in an Android app.

How to get current time and date in Android?

You could use:

import java.util.Calendar

Date currentTime = Calendar.getInstance().getTime();

There are plenty of constants in Calendar for everything you need.

Answer #2:

You can (but no longer should – see below!) use android.text.format.Time:

Time now = new Time();
now.setToNow();

From the reference linked above:

The Time class is a faster replacement for the java.util.Calendar and java.util.GregorianCalendar classes. An instance of the Time class represents a moment in time, specified with second precision.

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NOTE 1: It’s been several years since I wrote this answer, and it is about an old, Android-specific and now deprecated class. Google now says that “[t]his class has a number of issues and it is recommended that GregorianCalendar is used instead”.

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NOTE 2: Even though the Time class has a toMillis(ignoreDaylightSavings) method, this is merely a convenience to pass to methods that expect time in milliseconds. The time value is only precise to one second; the milliseconds’ portion is always 000. If in a loop you do

Time time = new Time();   time.setToNow();
Log.d("TIME TEST", Long.toString(time.toMillis(false)));
... do something that takes more than one millisecond, but less than one second ...

The resulting sequence will repeat the same value, such as 1410543204000, until the next second has started, at which time 1410543205000 will begin to repeat.

How to get the date and time in a specific pattern in Android?

If you want to get the date and time in a specific pattern you can use the following:

SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyyMMdd_HHmmss", Locale.getDefault());
String currentDateandTime = sdf.format(new Date());

Or,

Date:

String currentDate = new SimpleDateFormat("dd-MM-yyyy", Locale.getDefault()).format(new Date());

Time:

String currentTime = new SimpleDateFormat("HH:mm:ss", Locale.getDefault()).format(new Date());

For those who might rather prefer a customized format, you can use:

DateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("EEE, d MMM yyyy, HH:mm");
String date = df.format(Calendar.getInstance().getTime());

Whereas you can have DateFormat patterns such as:

"yyyy.MM.dd G 'at' HH:mm:ss z" ---- 2001.07.04 AD at 12:08:56 PDT
"hh 'o''clock' a, zzzz" ----------- 12 o'clock PM, Pacific Daylight Time
"EEE, d MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss Z"------- Wed, 4 Jul 2001 12:08:56 -0700
"yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSZ"------- 2001-07-04T12:08:56.235-0700
"yyMMddHHmmssZ"-------------------- 010704120856-0700
"K:mm a, z" ----------------------- 0:08 PM, PDT
"h:mm a" -------------------------- 12:08 PM
"EEE, MMM d, ''yy" ---------------- Wed, Jul 4, '01

Answer #4:

Actually, it’s safer to set the current timezone set on the device with Time.getCurrentTimezone(), or else you will get the current time in UTC.

Time today = new Time(Time.getCurrentTimezone());
today.setToNow();

Then, you can get all the date fields you want, like, for example:

textViewDay.setText(today.monthDay + "");             // Day of the month (1-31)
textViewMonth.setText(today.month + "");              // Month (0-11)
textViewYear.setText(today.year + "");                // Year 
textViewTime.setText(today.format("%k:%M:%S"));  // Current time

See android.text.format.Time class for all the details.

UPDATE

As many people are pointing out, Google says this class has a number of issues and is not supposed to be used anymore:

This class has a number of issues and it is recommended that GregorianCalendar is used instead.

Known issues:

For historical reasons when performing time calculations all arithmetic currently takes place using 32-bit integers. This limits the reliable time range representable from 1902 until 2037.See the wikipedia article on the Year 2038 problem for details. Do not rely on this behavior; it may change in the future. Calling switchTimezone(String) on a date that cannot exist, such as a wall time that was skipped due to a DST transition, will result in a date in 1969 (i.e. -1, or 1 second before 1st Jan 1970 UTC). Much of the formatting / parsing assumes ASCII text and is therefore not suitable for use with non-ASCII scripts.

Get current date and time in Android:

Try the following way. All formats are given below to get the date and time formats.

    Calendar c = Calendar.getInstance();
    SimpleDateFormat dateformat = new SimpleDateFormat("dd-MMM-yyyy hh:mm:ss aa");
    String datetime = dateformat.format(c.getTime());
    System.out.println(datetime);

Multiple possible answers:

Answer #1:

For the current date and time, use:

String mydate = java.text.DateFormat.getDateTimeInstance().format(Calendar.getInstance().getTime());

Which outputs:

Feb 27, 2012 5:41:23 PM

Answer #2:

To ge the current time you can use System.currentTimeMillis() which is standard in Java. Then you can use it to create a date

Date currentDate = new Date(System.currentTimeMillis());

And as mentioned by others to create a time

Time currentTime = new Time();
currentTime.setToNow();

Answer #3:

You can use the code:

Calendar c = Calendar.getInstance();
SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss");
String strDate = sdf.format(c.getTime());

Output:

2014-11-11 00:47:55

How can I get the current date and time in Android?

Easy. You can dissect the time to get separate values for current time, as follows:

Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();

int millisecond = cal.get(Calendar.MILLISECOND);
int second = cal.get(Calendar.SECOND);
int minute = cal.get(Calendar.MINUTE);

// 12-hour format
int hour = cal.get(Calendar.HOUR);

// 24-hour format
int hourofday = cal.get(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY);

Same goes for the date, as follows:

Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();

int dayofyear = cal.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_YEAR);
int year = cal.get(Calendar.YEAR);
int dayofweek = cal.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_WEEK);
int dayofmonth = cal.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH);

Answer #5:

For the current date and time with format, use:

In Java

Calendar c = Calendar.getInstance();
SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss");
String strDate = sdf.format(c.getTime());
Log.d("Date", "DATE: " + strDate)

In Kotlin

if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.O) {
    val current = LocalDateTime.now()
    val formatter = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("dd.MM.yyyy. HH:mm:ss")
    var myDate: String =  current.format(formatter)
    Log.d("Date", "DATE: " + myDate)
} else {
    var date = Date()
    val formatter = SimpleDateFormat("MMM dd yyyy HH:mma")
    val myDate: String = formatter.format(date)
    Log.d("Date", "DATE: " + myDate)
}

Date formatter patterns

"yyyy.MM.dd G 'at' HH:mm:ss z" ---- 2001.07.04 AD at 12:08:56 PDT
"hh 'o''clock' a, zzzz" ----------- 12 o'clock PM, Pacific Daylight Time
"EEE, d MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss Z"------- Wed, 4 Jul 2001 12:08:56 -0700
"yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSZ"------- 2001-07-04T12:08:56.235-0700
"yyMMddHHmmssZ"-------------------- 010704120856-0700
"K:mm a, z" ----------------------- 0:08 PM, PDT
"h:mm a" -------------------------- 12:08 PM
"EEE, MMM d, ''yy" ---------------- Wed, Jul 4, '01

Hope you learned something from this post.

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