Custom date formats in Shortcuts
Despite all of the predefined date formatting options, you may want to craft a format specific to your needs. You can create a custom date format by choosing Custom in the Format Date action. An additional Format String text field is displayed, allowing you to enter a format string that consists of a pattern of special characters.
Note: For custom format strings, Shortcuts uses the patterns defined by the Unicode Technical Standard #35. For more information, see Date Format Patterns.
The following table lists a summary of example format strings and their results.
Pattern | Result |
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Tip: Custom patterns can include special characters like . or / in between the date characters. You can also include custom text in the custom patterns by placing single quotes around the string (see the word 'at' in the first table entry, above).
You can see the complete set of custom date format characters in the Date Field Symbol Table included in this shortcut, or you can view the full Unicode #35 standard.