Convert human-readable dates to Unix Epoch timestamps and vice versa.
A Unix Timestamp (also known as Epoch time) is a system for describing a point in time. It is defined as the number of seconds that have elapsed since January 1, 1970 (midnight UTC/GMT), excluding leap seconds. This starting date is often referred to as the Unix Epoch.
In computing, storing time as a single integer is much more efficient and easier to calculate with than storing strings like "Oct 30, 2023 10:00 AM". It is the standard way that servers, databases, and APIs exchange time information.
The original 32-bit Unix timestamp format allows for numbers up to 2,147,483,647. This number corresponds to 03:14:07 UTC on 19 January 2038. After this moment, 32-bit systems will interpret the timestamp as a negative number, causing calculation errors. This is a known issue in legacy systems, often fixed by moving to 64-bit integers (which won't overflow for 292 billion years).
To manually convert a specific date to a Unix timestamp, you generally calculate the number of seconds since the Epoch. While our tool handles this automatically for you, the formula is roughly:
UNIX_TIMESTAMP = (Date in Seconds since Jan 1, 1970)
Developers often use this to synchronize events, schedule tasks in CRON jobs, or set expiration dates for cookies and tokens.