This is definitely broken on Win 10. Obsidian does not respect the OS short-date setting.
I like Obsidian, but to expect me to change the OS language setting is a bridge to far…
Could a possible workaround be to format the date using the ‘locale’ and ‘options’ parameters in Date.toLocaleString([locale], [options]). Then you could read those values from settings?
Also +1 that the setting needs to take time into account.
In the console I got the following results when trying different options:
navigator.language
‘en-US’
navigator.languages
(2) [‘en-US’, ‘sv-SE’]
new Date()
Tue Sep 26 2023 14:05:19 GMT+0200 (Central European Summer Time)
new Date().toLocaleString()
‘9/26/2023, 2:05:53 PM’
new Date().toLocaleString(‘sv-se’)
‘2023-09-26 14:07:45’
new Date().toISOString()
‘2023-09-26T12:09:17.555Z’
I think they specifically mean comments that only say “+1” (or equivalent) with no additional content, which are discouraged by the FAQ they linked to (and are annoying if you want to follow the conversation but inevitable because the Like button isn’t an obvious enough way to upvote).
I have the problem that the dates are shown in my preferred format (DD.MM.YYYY), but the input has to be YYYY-MM-DD.
So, I have written all dates as DD.MM.YYYY in the properties, but since the last update it shows the wrong dates, when I set the properties to visible.
Example:
When I write the date “29.09.2023” into the date section in the properties, the output is “20.09.2029”.
If I input it as “2023-09-29”, the date is parsed correctly and shown as “29.09.2023”.
Does anybody know, whether it’s possible to change the input format for the properties?
Obsidian 1.4.14
Windows 11 Pro 22H2
Short date format on OS: DD.MM.YYYY
When I write dates in the frontmatter I (almost) always go for YYYY-MM-DD. As it is now, Obsidian Properties View will render dates as MM-DD-YYYY, which is neither of my two “accepted” formats.
My take:
Obsidian should not assume my preferred formatting. What I want in Obsidian is not necessarily the same as what I want from other applications, or my OS in general.
Using USA based units or formats as the default is a bad idea (sorry), especially if you want to attract/keep international users.
Side note:
Why are document properties still rendered in reading mode when I’ve both disabled the Properties View plugin and set Editor > Properties in document to Source?
Even after restarting Obsidian.
The Properties view plugin is only for the Sidebar tabs (Show all properties & Show file properties). For hiding the Properties view in Reading mode, you could use the CSS snippet here.
I use json/csv importer to import trading data and this date issue is breaking my dataview queries.
On the screenshot you can see that my old imports (left) display properties in the correct format (yellow)
New imports (right) use slashes even tough the handlebar template is set to date and displays it correctly.
If I use '=this.openPeriod' is also shows me the dates in the US format on the right and German format on the left
On an related issue I also can not import my CSV rows as dates anymore. (purple) They all become underscores as file.name which now renders my queries obsolete… : (
Windows in US locales but tweaked (as I do not like US non-logical format) so system tray uses ISO format YYYY-MM-dd 2023-12-07 (+24hr format HH:mm with leading zeroes)
Obsidian installed to Win with those settings (so date was set before obsidian appeared in), Obsidian used daily and Win daily started and shutdown, plenty of opportunities to learn date/time format
date in note created by Templater into note via <% tp.date.now() %> results in same date format as for file property type date I made manually = mm/dd/yyyy. And in view mode it shows in US form like 12/07/2023 … However in Source mode I see ISO date-created: 2023-12-07 ! So internally it somehow works, but there is display bug.
+1
The new properties UI is nice to see.
My fields with ISO dates in them were automatically recognized as dates, and having a date picker and auto completion on the fields now is nice.
However, I’m on iOS.
My language is set to UK English, and my date format is set to YYYY-MM-DD, but Obsidian still displays a US date format, which is super confusing for me.
(The date picker, thankfully, uses ISO format in the source, so I can at least use that to set dates consistently with my existing notes.)
I understand that this feels like something the localization system should be handling, but OS support for using different locales for language/date/measurement or custom date formats really sucks.
GNU/Linux has it through the LC_ variables, and the possibility of building a custom locale, but Electron makes that a pain too.
It would be really nice to be able to override the locale-provided format somewhere in settings.
