Default date format across the product:
- DD MMM YYYY (21 Feb 2021), following the European notation. DD MMM YY is also allowed, if space is an issue.
- Use three-letter month name abbreviations: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec.
Date format with humanised text
When communicating events to the user (such as creation or update of content), round values up and use the following strings:
- A few seconds ago (less than 60s)
- 1 minute ago (60 -119s)
- 2 - 59 minutes ago
- 1 hour ago
- 2 - 12 hours ago
- Yesterday
- After 48hours, show the date in the standard format, e.g., 21 Feb 2021.
Where required, use abbreviations to save space:
- A few sec. ago, 30 sec. ago, 1-59 min. ago, 1-23 hr. ago
- Remember to include the full stop at the end of abbrevation.
Technical guidelines
We are using a library called date-fns:
The tokens used for regular formatting are d MMM yyyy.
For relative formatting we are using a function called formatDistanceToNowStrict. You can read more about it here: