The toLocaleTimeString() method returns a string with a language sensitive representation of the time portion of this date. The new locales and options arguments let applications specify the language whose formatting conventions should be used and customize the behavior of the function. In older implementations, which ignore the locales and options arguments, the locale used and the form of the string returned are entirely implementation dependent.
The source for this interactive example is stored in a GitHub repository. If you'd like to contribute to the interactive examples project, please clone https://github.com/mdn/interactive-examples and send us a pull request.
Syntax
dateObj.toLocaleTimeString([locales[, options]])Parameters
Check the Browser compatibility section to see which browsers support the locales and options arguments, and Checking for support for locales and options arguments for feature detection.
locales-
Optional. A string with a BCP 47 language tag, or an array of such strings. To choose the browser's default locale, use
"default". Unicode extension are supported (for example"en-US-u-ca-buddhist"). For the general form and interpretation of thelocalesargument, see the Intl page. The following Unicode extension keys are allowed:nu- Numbering system. Possible values include:
"arab","arabext","bali","beng","deva","fullwide","gujr","guru","hanidec","khmr","knda","laoo","latn","limb","mlym","mong","mymr","orya","tamldec","telu","thai","tibt". ca- Calendar. Possible values include:
"buddhist","chinese","coptic","ethiopia","ethiopic","gregory","hebrew","indian","islamic","islamic","iso8601","japanese","persian","roc". hc- Hour cycle. Possible values include:
"h11","h12","h23","h24".
options-
Optional. An object with some or all of the following properties:
localeMatcher- The locale matching algorithm to use. Possible values are
"lookup"and"best fit"; the default is"best fit". For information about this option, see the Intl page. timeZone- The time zone to use. The only value implementations must recognize is
"UTC"; the default is the runtime's default time zone. Implementations may also recognize the time zone names of the IANA time zone database, such as"Asia/Shanghai","Asia/Kolkata","America/New_York". hour12- Whether to use 12-hour time (as opposed to 24-hour time). Possible values are
trueandfalse; the default is locale dependent. This option overrides thehclanguage tag and/or thehourCycleoption in case both are present. hourCycle- The hour cycle to use. Possible values are
"h11","h12","h23", or"h24". This option overrides thehclanguage tag, if both are present, and thehour12option takes precedence in case both options have been specified. formatMatcher- The format matching algorithm to use. Possible values are
"basic"and"best fit"; the default is"best fit". See the following paragraphs for information about the use of this property.
The following properties describe the date-time components to use in formatted output, and their desired representations. Implementations are required to support at least the following subsets:
weekday,year,month,day,hour,minute,secondweekday,year,month,dayyear,month,dayyear,monthmonth,dayhour,minute,secondhour,minute
Implementations may support other subsets, and requests will be negotiated against all available subset-representation combinations to find the best match. Two algorithms are available for this negotiation and selected by the
formatMatcherproperty: A fully specified"basic"algorithm and an implementation-dependent"best fit"algorithm.weekday- The representation of the weekday. Possible values are:
"long"(e.g.,Thursday)"short"(e.g.,Thu)"narrow"(e.g.,T). Two weekdays may have the same narrow style for some locales (e.g.Tuesday's narrow style is alsoT).
era- The representation of the era. Possible values are:
"long"(e.g.,Anno Domini)"short"(e.g.,AD)"narrow"(e.g.,A)
year- The representation of the year. Possible values are:
"numeric"(e.g.,2012)"2-digit"(e.g.,12)
month- The representation of the month. Possible values are:
"numeric"(e.g.,2)"2-digit"(e.g.,02)"long"(e.g.,March)"short"(e.g.,Mar)"narrow"(e.g.,M). Two months may have the same narrow style for some locales (e.g.May's narrow style is alsoM).
day- The representation of the day. Possible values are:
"numeric"(e.g.,1)"2-digit"(e.g.,01)
hour- The representation of the hour. Possible values are
"numeric","2-digit". minute- The representation of the minute. Possible values are
"numeric","2-digit". second- The representation of the second. Possible values are
"numeric","2-digit". timeZoneName- The representation of the time zone name. Possible values are:
"long"(e.g.,British Summer Time)"short"(e.g.,GMT+1)
The default value for each date-time component property is undefined, but if the hour, minute, second properties are all undefined, then hour, minute, and second are assumed to be "numeric".
Return value
A string representing the time portion of the given Date instance according to language-specific conventions.
Examples
Using toLocaleTimeString()
In basic use without specifying a locale, a formatted string in the default locale and with default options is returned.
var date = new Date(Date.UTC(2012, 11, 12, 3, 0, 0)); // toLocaleTimeString() without arguments depends on the implementation, // the default locale, and the default time zone console.log(date.toLocaleTimeString()); // → "7:00:00 PM" if run in en-US locale with time zone America/Los_Angeles
Checking for support for locales and options arguments
The locales and options arguments are not supported in all browsers yet. To check whether an implementation supports them already, you can use the requirement that illegal language tags are rejected with a RangeError exception:
function toLocaleTimeStringSupportsLocales() {
try {
new Date().toLocaleTimeString('i');
} catch (e) {
return e.name === 'RangeError';
}
return false;
}
Using locales
This example shows some of the variations in localized time 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:
var 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 12-hour time with AM/PM
console.log(date.toLocaleTimeString('en-US'));
// → "7:00:00 PM"
// British English uses 24-hour time without AM/PM
console.log(date.toLocaleTimeString('en-GB'));
// → "03:00:00"
// Korean uses 12-hour time with AM/PM
console.log(date.toLocaleTimeString('ko-KR'));
// → "오후 12:00:00"
// Arabic in most Arabic speaking countries uses real Arabic digits
console.log(date.toLocaleTimeString('ar-EG'));
// → "٧:٠٠:٠٠ م"
// when requesting a language that may not be supported, such as
// Balinese, include a fallback language, in this case Indonesian
console.log(date.toLocaleTimeString(['ban', 'id']));
// → "11.00.00"
Using options
The results provided by toLocaleTimeString() can be customized using the options argument:
var date = new Date(Date.UTC(2012, 11, 20, 3, 0, 0));
// an application may want to use UTC and make that visible
var options = { timeZone: 'UTC', timeZoneName: 'short' };
console.log(date.toLocaleTimeString('en-US', options));
// → "3:00:00 AM GMT"
// sometimes even the US needs 24-hour time
console.log(date.toLocaleTimeString('en-US', { hour12: false }));
// → "19:00:00"
Performance
When formatting large numbers of dates, it is better to create an Intl.DateTimeFormat object and use the function provided by its format property.
Specifications
Browser compatibility
The compatibility table in this page is generated from structured data. If you'd like to contribute to the data, please check out https://github.com/mdn/browser-compat-data and send us a pull request.
| Desktop | Mobile | Server | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
toLocaleTimeString | Chrome Full support Yes | Edge Full support 12 | Firefox Full support 1 | IE Full support Yes | Opera Full support Yes | Safari Full support Yes | WebView Android Full support Yes | Chrome Android Full support Yes | Firefox Android Full support 4 | Opera Android Full support Yes | Safari iOS Full support Yes | Samsung Internet Android Full support Yes | nodejs ? |
locales | Chrome Full support 24 | Edge Full support 12 | Firefox Full support 29 | IE Full support 11 | Opera Full support 15 | Safari Full support 10 | WebView Android No support No | Chrome Android Full support 26 | Firefox Android Full support 56 | Opera Android No support No | Safari iOS Full support 10 | Samsung Internet Android Full support Yes | nodejs ? |
options | Chrome Full support 24 | Edge Full support 12 | Firefox Full support 29 | IE Full support 11 | Opera Full support 15 | Safari Full support 10 | WebView Android No support No | Chrome Android Full support 26 | Firefox Android Full support 56 | Opera Android No support No | Safari iOS Full support 10 | Samsung Internet Android Full support Yes | nodejs ? |
IANA time zone names in timeZone option | Chrome Full support 24 | Edge Full support 14 | Firefox Full support 52 | IE ? | Opera Full support 15 | Safari ? | WebView Android Full support 37 | Chrome Android Full support 25 | Firefox Android No support No | Opera Android ? | Safari iOS ? | Samsung Internet Android Full support Yes | nodejs ? |
Legend
- Full support
- Full support
- No support
- No support
- Compatibility unknown
- Compatibility unknown