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Samples

On Linux, just use as date. On macOS, you’ll need to setup gdate and then use that instead below with the same arguments.

Today

  • Default. 
      $ gdate
  Wed Aug 26 19:44:35 SAST 2020
  • Date. 
      $ date '+%Y%m%d'
  20200826
  $ date '+%Y-%m-%d'
  2020-08-27
  • Unix Timestamp. 
      $ date -d 'Oct 21 1973' +%s
  120002400
  • UTC 
      $ date -u

Date string

The --date=STRING is a mostly free format human readable date string.

e.g.

$ date --date 'Sun, 29 Feb 2004 16:21:42 -0800'
$ date --date '2004-02-29 16:21:42'
$ date --date 'next day'
$ date --date 'next Thursday'
$ date --date '09:00 next Fri'
$ date --date ''  # midnight of today

A date string may contain items indicating calendar date, time of day, time zone, day of week, relative time, relative date, and numbers.

An empty string indicates the beginning of the day. The date string format is more complex than is easily documented here but is fully described in the info documentation.

A target Unix Timestamp date.

$ date --date @120024000
Sun Oct 21 06:00:00 SAST 1973

Specify a date string and an output format.

$ date --date="next day" +%Y-%m-%d
2020-08-27

Minutes:

$ date --date='5 minutes ago'
Wed Aug 26 19:44:48 SAST 2020
$ date
Wed Aug 26 19:49:48 SAST 2020
$ date --date='5 minutes'
Wed Aug 26 19:54:48 SAST 2020

Advanced

Copied from date --help. Show the local time for 9AM next Friday on the West coast of the US.

$ date --date='TZ="America/Los_Angeles" 09:00 next Fri'
Fri Aug 28 18:00:00 SAST 2020

Set up on macOS

On macOS, the GNU Linux one can be installed:

brew rm coreutils && brew install coreutils

$ which gdate
/usr/local/bin/gdate

$ gdate
Wed Aug 26 19:27:24 SAST 2020

Use GNU Linux date on macOS

You can then add an alias to the macOS system uses gdate instead.

alias date=gdate

CLI

$ date --version # Linux
$ gdate --version # macOS

date (GNU coreutils) 8.32
Copyright (C) 2020 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

$ man date

DATE(1)                                    User Commands                                    DATE(1)



NAME
       date - print or set the system date and time

SYNOPSIS
       date [OPTION]... [+FORMAT]
       date [-u|--utc|--universal] [MMDDhhmm[[CC]YY][.ss]]

DESCRIPTION
       Display the current time in the given FORMAT, or set the system date.

       Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.

       -d, --date=STRING
              display time described by STRING, not 'now'
       ...