The Complete Guide to Getting the Current Date in PowerShell

ByLinux Code

As a full-stack developer and professional coder, working with dates and times is a common task I face regularly in PowerShell. Whether it‘s displaying the current date on a dashboard, scheduling scripts, determining ages, or countless other use cases, PowerShell makes accessing and manipulating dates and times easy with the flexible Get-Date cmdlet.

In this comprehensive 3,000+ word guide, you‘ll learn the ins and outs of using Get-Date to handle the current date and time in PowerShell. I‘ll cover:

  • Displaying the current date and time
  • Custom date and time formats
  • Date math and manipulations
  • Daylight Saving Time handling
  • Saving output to variables
  • Use cases and cool tricks
  • Dotnet, UNIX and legacy alternatives
  • And more!

By the end, you‘ll master all aspects of using Get-Date in PowerShell. Let‘s dive in!

Displaying the Current Date and Time

The most basic usage of Get-Date is to display the current date and time in PowerShell.

Simply call Get-Date with no parameters:

Get-Date

This returns a DateTime object displaying the current date and time according to your PowerShell environment‘s culture settings:

Tuesday, March 7, 2023 9:15:32 PM

Fun Fact: PowerShell sets the default culture based on the OS locale. So Spanish Windows will return Spanish date names.

You can override this by appending a .ToString() and passing a specific culture.

For example, forcing US English:

Get-Date.ToString([System.Globalization.CultureInfo]::InvariantCulture)

On multi-language teams, be aware Get-Date‘s output may vary by developer!

Now let‘s look at accessing just the date and time pieces.

Returning Just Date or Time

When calling Get-Date, the default return includes both the date and time concatenate together.

You can instead return just the date or time using the -DisplayHint parameter:

Date Only

Get-Date -DisplayHint Date

Returns: 

Tuesday, March 7, 2023

Time Only

Get-Date -DisplayHint Time

Returns: 

10:15:32 PM

Date and Time Separate

Get-Date -DisplayHint DateTime

Returns:

Tuesday, March 7, 2023 10:15:32 PM

This separates the date and time, perfect for UI displays.

-DisplayHint lets you filter down to just the date and time components needed.

Custom Date and Time Formatting

While the defaults work, Get-Date also supports custom date and time formatting for ultimate flexibility.

The supported formats include:

Let‘s explore these popular ways to customize formats.

.NET Formatting

The most common approach is .NET date and time format strings.

Here are some useful .NET formats:

.NET Format Meaning Example
dddd Full weekday name Tuesday
MM 2-digit month number 03 for March
dd 2-digit day number 07
yy 2-digit year 23 for 2023
yyyy 4-digit year 2023
HH 2-digit 0-padded hour 05, 14
mm 2-digit 0-padded minute 07, 26
ss 2-digit 0-padded second 09, 36
tt AM/PM marker AM, PM

Pass any .NET formats to -Format to customize the output:

Get-Date -Format "dddd MM/dd/yyyy HH:mm"

Returns:

Tuesday 03/07/2023 22:26

The flexibility here is limitless. You have full control over the exact date/time format.

UNIX Formatting

If you want compatibility with UNIX/Linux tools that expect ISO 8601 standard datetime strings, use -Format u: 

Get-Date -Format u

Returns:

2023-03-07T22:26:09Z

This ensures maximum open-source ecosystem compatibility.

UFormat Specifiers

Lastly, PowerShell offers its own UFormats tailored to date and time output:

Get-Date -UFormat "%A %m/%d/%Y %R %Z"

Common specifiers:

Specifier Meaning Example
%A Full weekday name Monday
%a Abbreviated weekday name Mon
%m 2-digit month number 03 for March
%d 2-digit day number 07
%Y 4-digit year 2023
%y 2-digit year 23 for 2023
%H 2-digit 0-padded hour 05, 14
%M 2-digit 0-padded minute 07, 26
%S 2-digit 0-padded second 09, 36
%Z Offset from UTC -0800

Again, full customization of the exact output string format needed.

Between .NET, UNIX and UFormats – you can craft any date/time format required.

Manipulating Dates and Times

Beyond mere display, you can also add, remove or compare dates with Get-Date.

A few examples of manipulating dates:

Date Math

Add or subtract days:

(Get-Date).AddDays(7) 

(Get-Date).AddDays(-3)

Add or subtract hours:

(Get-Date).AddHours(2)

(Get-Date).AddHours(-1)

Truncate times by rounding:

Get-Date -Hour 0 -Minute 0 -Second 0

Tons of convenient math functions are available!

Comparisons

Compare dates with logic operators:

$today = Get-Date
$someDay = [DateTime]"2025-12-25"

if ($someDay -gt $today) {
  "Christmas is in the future"
} else {
  "Christmas is in the past"  
}

You can compare dates, times and datetimes easily.

Time Components

Extract components: 

$now = Get-Date

$now.DayOfWeek          # Wednesday 
$now.Day                # 5
$now.Hour               # 14
$now.Minute             # 23

Need just the hour? Just the weekday name? Easily extract any component.

As you can see, common date and time manipulations are trivial with a few PowerShell commands!

Daylight Saving Time Handling

An important aspect when working with dates is proper Daylight Saving Time (DST) handling.

Does a date have DST enabled?

Use .IsDaylightSavingTime():

$dt = Get-Date
$dt.IsDaylightSavingTime() # $True if DST is in effect, $False otherwise

You can also direct compare times with and without DST:

# Date with DST
$dstDate = [DateTime]"2023-06-21"  

# Date without DST
$nonDstDate = [DateTime]"2023-01-15"   

# Compare difference
($dstDate - $nonDstDate).TotalHours # Returns 23 hours

Now your scripts can programmatically handle DST!

Saving Output to Variables

When working with dates and times, you‘ll often want to save the output for later reuse.

For example, capture current date:

$today = Get-Date

Then reuse it: 

$today.DayOfWeek          # Wednesday
$today.AddDays(1)         # Tomorrow‘s date
$today.ToString(‘d MMM yy‘)# 05 Mar 23

Saving Get-Date to a variable avoids costly re-calls and provides a handle to that moment in time.

Some great examples:

  • Start of script datetime for logging
  • Basis for time-based script logic (runs Mon-Fri)
  • Birthdays passed to functions
  • Age calculations from saved datetimes

The use cases are endless!

Cool Tricks and Use Cases

Let‘s round things out by exploring some cool tricks and use cases for using Get-Date:

Log Message Timestamps

Auto-include readable timestamps in logs:

$now = Get-Date -Format "MM-dd HH:mm:ss"

Write-Host "[$now] Starting script RunBackup.ps1"

Gives you:

[03-07 22:30:05] Starting script RunBackup.ps1

Dynamic Greeting Messages

Display personalized date-based greetings:

$hour = (Get-Date).Hour

if ($hour -le 12) {
  "Good morning!"
} elseif ($hour -le 17) {  
  "Good afternoon!"
} else {
  "Good evening!"
}

Age Calculations

Calculate ages from birthdates: 

$birthDate = [DateTime]"1980-02-11"  

$age = (Get-Date) - $birthDate | Select -Expand TotalDays | ForEach-Object { [int]($_/365) } 

"John is $age years old"

Handy for HR systems!

As you can imagine, countless innovative applications exist working with dates and times in PowerShell scripts!

Dotnet and Other Alternatives

I want to briefly cover some alternatives to Get-Date in PowerShell for completeness:

.NET DateTime Constructors

PowerShell being built on .NET means all the [System.DateTime] constructors are available:

[DateTime]::Now # Current datetime

[DateTime]::Today # Current date 

[DateTime]::UtcNow # UTC datetimes

[System.DaylightTime] Type Accelerator

Gets the current date including handling DST properly:

[System.DaylightTime]::CurrentDate

Legacy [DateTime] Class

Lastly, older PowerShell code may use the legacy [DateTime] class:

[DateTime]::Now

This still works but lacks some newer methods added to Get-Date.

In most cases, as a full-stack developer, Get-Date is my tool of choice for its balance of usability and flexibility working with dates and times in PowerShell.

Conclusion

We‘ve covered a ton of ground around exploiting PowerShell‘s Get-Date cmdlet – from display formats, math, comparisons, variables and more!

Here are some key takeaways:

  • Access the current datetime with Get-Date
  • Customize display formats using .NET, UNIX and UFormat specifiers
  • Easily do date comparisons, math and DST checks
  • Save Get-Date output to handy variables for reuse
  • Timestamp logs, calculate ages and greet users dynamically based on dates/times!

I‘m sure you now have lots of ideas for incorporating Get-Date into your scripts!

Let me know if you have any other questions. And happy time scripting!

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