Have you ever tried to organize an event on Discord, only to have half your users show up an hour late because of time zone confusion?
We’ve all been there. You say “Event starts at 5 PM EST,” but your friend in London sees “5 PM” and assumes it’s their local time.
The solution is Discord Dynamic Timestamps.
You’ve probably seen them before — those magical little tags that say “in 2 hours” or “Sunday at 4:00 PM” and automatically adjust to the reader’s local time zone.
In this guide, I’ll show you exactly how to create them manually, and the faster way to generate them automatically.
The Easy Way (Recommended)
If you don’t want to do math or memorize code, I built a free tool that does this instantly.
DiscTimestamps is a dedicated generator that:
Automatically calculates the Unix time.
Shows you a Live Preview of what the code looks like.
Let’s you click-to-copy the code in seconds.
If you prefer to do it the hard way (manually), keep reading for the syntax breakdown.
The Manual Syntax
Discord uses a specific format called Unix Timestamping. The syntax looks like this:
There are three parts to this code:
<t: – Opens the tag.
TIMESTAMP – The time in Unix format (seconds since 1970).
FLAG – A single letter that tells Discord how to display the time.
Step 1: Get the Unix Time
You cannot type “2025–12–09” into Discord. You need to convert that date into a number like 1765238400.
You can use a site like DiscTimestamps.com to get this number accurately for your specific date.
Step 2: Choose your Flag (The Cheat Sheet)
Once you have your number, you need to decide how it looks. Here is the complete list of flags supported by Discord:
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Relative Time (:R)
Code:
Result: “in 2 hours” or “5 minutes ago”
Best for: Countdowns, events, and reminders.
Short Time (:t)
Code:
Result: “4:00 PM”
Best for: Simple clock times.
Long Date (:D)
Code:
Result: “December 9, 2025”
Best for: Announcing future dates without the time.
Full Date with Short Time (:f)
Code:
Result: “December 9, 2025 4:00 PM”
Best for: The standard format for most event announcements.
Why use Relative Time (:R)?
The :R flag is the most powerful tool for a community manager. It creates a sense of urgency.
Instead of writing “Stream starts at 8 PM,” write: “Stream starts !”
This will show up as “Stream starts in 4 hours!” for everyone, regardless of where they live. As the time gets closer, the message updates itself automatically to “in 5 minutes”.
Summary
Don’t type time zones manually (EST, GMT, PST).
Do use Unix timestamps to sync your community.
Do use Discord Timestamps tool to generate these codes error-free, especially on mobile where typing brackets is annoying.
Happy gaming!
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