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.
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. For the general form and interpretation of the
locales
argument, 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"
,"ethioaa"
,"ethiopic"
,"gregory"
,"hebrew"
,"indian"
,"islamic"
,"islamicc"
,"iso8601"
,"japanese"
,"persian"
,"roc"
.
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
true
andfalse
; the default is locale dependent. 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
,second
weekday
,year
,month
,day
year
,month
,day
year
,month
month
,day
hour
,minute
,second
hour
,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
formatMatcher
property: A fully specified"basic"
algorithm and an implementation dependent"best fit"
algorithm.weekday
- The representation of the weekday. Possible values are
"narrow"
,"short"
,"long"
. era
- The representation of the era. Possible values are
"narrow"
,"short"
,"long"
. year
- The representation of the year. Possible values are
"numeric"
,"2-digit"
. month
- The representation of the month. Possible values are
"numeric"
,"2-digit"
,"narrow"
,"short"
,"long"
. day
- The representation of the day. Possible values are
"numeric"
,"2-digit"
. 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
"short"
,"long"
.
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.
Feature | Chrome | Firefox | Edge | Internet Explorer | Opera | Safari |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Basic Support | (Yes) | (Yes) | (Yes) | (Yes) | (Yes) | (Yes) |
locales | 24 | 29 | ? | 11 | 15 | 10 |
options | 24 | 29 | ? | 11 | 15 | 10 |
IANA time zone names in timeZone option | 24 | 52 | ? | ? | ? | ? |
Feature | Android | Chrome for Android | Edge mobile | Firefox for Android | IE mobile | Opera Android | iOS Safari |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Basic Support | (Yes) | (Yes) | (Yes) | (Yes) | (Yes) | (Yes) | (Yes) |
locales | (No) | 26 | ? | (No) | (No) | (No) | 10 |
options | (No) | 26 | ? | (No) | (No) | (No) | 10 |
IANA time zone names in timeZone option | ? | ? | ? | (No) | ? | ? | ? |