Unix timestamp ↔ Human date
Current:
Convert Unix timestamps to human-readable dates and vice versa. Supports seconds and milliseconds. Free developer tool. This tool runs entirely in your browser — no data is sent to any server. It's fast, free, and works on any device.
Unix timestamps represent time as the number of seconds elapsed since the Unix epoch — January 1, 1970, at 00:00:00 UTC. This simple integer format is the universal standard for storing and transmitting time in computing. Databases, APIs, log files, and programming languages all use timestamps because they're timezone-independent, easy to compare, and compact to store. Converting between human-readable dates and timestamps is a daily task for developers debugging logs, setting token expiration times, scheduling tasks, or analyzing event data. This tool handles both directions — timestamp to date and date to timestamp — with millisecond precision. Common timestamps you might encounter include JWT expiration claims, database created_at fields, and API rate limit headers.
The Unix epoch is January 1, 1970, 00:00:00 UTC. It's the reference point from which all Unix timestamps are measured. The choice of 1970 was practical — Unix was being developed in the late 1960s, and 1970 was a convenient round date.
Unix timestamps in seconds are 10 digits (e.g., 1708444800), while millisecond timestamps are 13 digits (e.g., 1708444800000). JavaScript's Date.now() returns milliseconds, while most Unix systems use seconds.
The 'Year 2038 problem' affects 32-bit systems that store timestamps as signed integers — they'll overflow on January 19, 2038. Most modern 64-bit systems are unaffected and can handle dates billions of years in the future.
They don't — that's the beauty of Unix timestamps. A timestamp always represents a specific moment in UTC. The same timestamp converts to different local times depending on the timezone, but the underlying value is universal.
Yes — negative timestamps represent dates before the Unix epoch (before January 1, 1970). For example, -86400 represents December 31, 1969. Most programming languages support negative timestamps.