Date format options in bases

[callumhackett]

Use case or problem

I would like to display a property in a base with the following features:

1. the property is of the date type
2. the date can be edited by clicking on it
3. the date can be shown in relative format (and possibly others)

At the moment, I can achieve (1) and (2) by showing a date property in default YYYY-MM-DD format, or I can achieve (1) and (3) by using a formula of the kind date.relative(), which creates a text string rather than a date proper, but I cannot achieve (2) and (3) simultaneously.

Proposed solution

Add formatting options (or arbitrary formulae) to date properties in bases while retaining click-to-edit. If it would be difficult to apply click-to-edit to relative dates, then just keep the prepended calendar icon to allow for the calendar popup.

[CawlinTeffid]

Related:

Properties: let the user customize the way Dates/Times are displayed (independently from OS)

Not being able to change the date format has bothered me for a long time. I might even have contributed to this thread but there’s so many posts that the forum makes it hard to find them. Or maybe it was Discord, it’s been a while since I last mentioned it but it bothers me literally every day. There are dedicated Windows date format and Linux date format issue threads, with Mac users leaving posts confirming problems in the replies as well. There’s people posting registry hacks to try to work…

[andybergon]

+1 on this. Beyond relative dates, it would be great to have per-property date formatting in Bases generally.

Right now, date display format is controlled globally in Obsidian (Settings > General > Date format), which means every date property across every Base
renders the same way. A deadline column might benefit from “Feb 28” while a created column might be better as “2026-02-10”.

A dateFormat option in the .base property definition (e.g., dateFormat: “MMM DD”) would solve this nicely.