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.
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”.
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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