Date.prototype.toLocaleDateString()

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2015.

The toLocaleDateString() method of Date instances returns a string with a language-sensitive representation of the date portion of this date in the local timezone. In implementations with Intl.DateTimeFormat API support, this method delegates to Intl.DateTimeFormat.

Every time toLocaleString is called, it has to perform a search in a big database of localization strings, which is potentially inefficient. When the method is called many times with the same arguments, it is better to create a Intl.DateTimeFormat object and use its format() method, because a DateTimeFormat object remembers the arguments passed to it and may decide to cache a slice of the database, so future format calls can search for localization strings within a more constrained context.

Try it

const event = new Date(Date.UTC(2012, 11, 20, 3, 0, 0));
const options = {
  weekday: "long",
  year: "numeric",
  month: "long",
  day: "numeric",
};

console.log(event.toLocaleDateString("de-DE", options));
// Expected output (varies according to local timezone): Donnerstag, 20. Dezember 2012

console.log(event.toLocaleDateString("ar-EG", options));
// Expected output (varies according to local timezone): الخميس، ٢٠ ديسمبر، ٢٠١٢

console.log(event.toLocaleDateString(undefined, options));
// Expected output (varies according to local timezone and default locale): Thursday, December 20, 2012

Syntax

js
toLocaleDateString()
toLocaleDateString(locales)
toLocaleDateString(locales, options)

Parameters

The locales and options parameters customize the behavior of the function and let applications specify the language whose formatting conventions should be used.

In implementations that support the Intl.DateTimeFormat API, these parameters correspond exactly to the Intl.DateTimeFormat() constructor's parameters. Implementations without Intl.DateTimeFormat support are asked to ignore both parameters, making the locale used and the form of the string returned entirely implementation-dependent.

locales Optional

A string with a BCP 47 language tag, or an array of such strings. Corresponds to the locales parameter of the Intl.DateTimeFormat() constructor.

In implementations without Intl.DateTimeFormat support, this parameter is ignored and the host's locale is usually used.

options Optional

An object adjusting the output format. Corresponds to the options parameter of the Intl.DateTimeFormat() constructor. The timeStyle option must be undefined, or a TypeError would be thrown. If weekday, year, month, and day are all undefined, then year, month, and day will be set to "numeric".

In implementations without Intl.DateTimeFormat support, this parameter is ignored.

See the Intl.DateTimeFormat() constructor for details on these parameters and how to use them.

Return value

A string representing the date portion of the given date according to language-specific conventions.

In implementations with Intl.DateTimeFormat, this is equivalent to new Intl.DateTimeFormat(locales, options).format(date), where options has been normalized as described above.

Note: Most of the time, the formatting returned by toLocaleDateString() is consistent. However, the output may vary between implementations, even within the same locale — output variations are by design and allowed by the specification. It may also not be what you expect. For example, the string may use non-breaking spaces or be surrounded by bidirectional control characters. You should not compare the results of toLocaleDateString() to hardcoded constants.

Examples

Using toLocaleDateString()

Basic use of this method without specifying a locale returns a formatted string in the default locale and with default options.

js
const date = new Date(Date.UTC(2012, 11, 12, 3, 0, 0));

// toLocaleDateString() without arguments depends on the implementation,
// the default locale, and the default time zone
console.log(date.toLocaleDateString());
// "12/11/2012" if run in en-US locale with time zone America/Los_Angeles

Checking for support for locales and options parameters

The locales and options parameters may not be supported in all implementations, because support for the internationalization API is optional, and some systems may not have the necessary data. For implementations without internationalization support, toLocaleDateString() always uses the system's locale, which may not be what you want. Because any implementation that supports the locales and options parameters must support the Intl API, you can check the existence of the latter for support:

js
function toLocaleDateStringSupportsLocales() {
  return (
    typeof Intl === "object" &&
    !!Intl &&
    typeof Intl.DateTimeFormat === "function"
  );
}

Using locales

This example shows some of the variations in localized date formats. In order to get the format of the language used in the user interface of your application, make sure to specify that language (and possibly some fallback languages) using the locales argument:

js
const date = new Date(Date.UTC(2012, 11, 20, 3, 0, 0));

// formats below assume the local time zone of the locale;
// America/Los_Angeles for the US

// US English uses month-day-year order
console.log(date.toLocaleDateString("en-US"));
// "12/20/2012"

// British English uses day-month-year order
console.log(date.toLocaleDateString("en-GB"));
// "20/12/2012"

// Korean uses year-month-day order
console.log(date.toLocaleDateString("ko-KR"));
// "2012. 12. 20."

// Event for Persian, It's hard to manually convert date to Solar Hijri
console.log(date.toLocaleDateString("fa-IR"));
// "۱۳۹۱/۹/۳۰"

// Arabic in most Arabic speaking countries uses real Arabic digits
console.log(date.toLocaleDateString("ar-EG"));
// "٢٠‏/١٢‏/٢٠١٢"

// for Japanese, applications may want to use the Japanese calendar,
// where 2012 was the year 24 of the Heisei era
console.log(date.toLocaleDateString("ja-JP-u-ca-japanese"));
// "24/12/20"

// when requesting a language that may not be supported, such as
// Balinese, include a fallback language, in this case Indonesian
console.log(date.toLocaleDateString(["ban", "id"]));
// "20/12/2012"

Using options

The results provided by toLocaleDateString() can be customized using the options parameter:

js
const date = new Date(Date.UTC(2012, 11, 20, 3, 0, 0));

// Request a weekday along with a long date
const options = {
  weekday: "long",
  year: "numeric",
  month: "long",
  day: "numeric",
};
console.log(date.toLocaleDateString("de-DE", options));
// "Donnerstag, 20. Dezember 2012"

// An application may want to use UTC and make that visible
options.timeZone = "UTC";
options.timeZoneName = "short";
console.log(date.toLocaleDateString("en-US", options));
// "Thursday, December 20, 2012, UTC"

Specifications

Specification
ECMAScript® 2026 Language Specification
# sec-date.prototype.tolocaledatestring
ECMAScript® 2026 Internationalization API Specification
# sup-date.prototype.tolocaledatestring

Browser compatibility

See also