How to See the Exact Time a Slack Message Was Sent

To see the exact time a Slack message was sent, hover over the time next to the sender's name on desktop. Slack shows a tooltip with the day and the time to the second, such as "Today at 4:26:15 PM". The short time in the channel, such as 4:26 PM, is when the message was posted, in your own time zone. On iPhone and Android, the time sits next to the name; if a thread or the Activity tab shows "2 hours ago", open the message to see the clock time.

For more than the second, or for a message you only have a link to, copy the message link. The digits after the letter p in the link are a Unix timestamp, down to the microsecond. Put a dot after the first 10 digits and paste the number into our free Slack timestamp converter to get the date and time, or follow the steps below.

Our free Slack timezone converter turns a time into your coworkers' local times.

One message, checked three ways

On October 4, 2026 we posted a test message to ourselves in the Slack web app and read its time from the hover, the link and the API.

Converting the first 10 digits on the Mac gave the same second in every zone we tried:

$ date -r 1791098775
Sun Oct  4 16:26:15 KST 2026
$ date -u -r 1791098775
Sun Oct  4 07:26:15 UTC 2026
$ TZ=Europe/London date -r 1791098775
Sun Oct  4 08:26:15 BST 2026

So the hover and the link agree to the second, and the link adds six more digits, which are microseconds. We deleted the test message afterwards.

Where Slack shows when a message was sent

Slack groups messages from the same person sent a few minutes apart. The later messages in a group show no name and no time until you hover over them. Hover over the left edge of the message and the time appears.

See the full date and time on desktop

• Find the message in the channel, DM or thread.
• Move your mouse over the time next to the sender's name. For a grouped message with no name, hover over the space to the left of the text.
• Read the tooltip. It shows the day and the time with seconds. For today's messages the day reads "Today".
• Older messages show a date divider above them, so you can also scroll up to the nearest divider.

Clicking the time opens the message's own link, which is how you get the exact second in the next section.

Find the exact second from the message link

Every Slack message has a link, and the link carries the time the message was sent:

• Hover over the message, click the three dots icon, and choose Copy link.
• Paste it somewhere. It looks like https://acme.slack.com/archives/C024BE91L/p1790505852123456.
• Take the 16 digits after the p. Put a dot after the first 10: 1790505852.123456.
• The first 10 digits are seconds since 1 January 1970 UTC, which is Unix time. Convert them:

# macOS
date -r 1790505852

# Linux
date -d @1790505852

# Any system with Python
python3 -c "import datetime; print(datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(1790505852))"

In PowerShell on Windows:

[DateTimeOffset]::FromUnixTimeSeconds(1790505852).ToLocalTime()

That example is 27 September, 10:44:12 UTC. The Slack timestamp converter does the same in the browser, in your own time zone, and turns a date back into a message ts. The same number is the message's ts value in the Slack API and in workspace exports, where Slack uses it as the message ID. If the link ends in ?thread_ts=..., that second number is the time of the thread's parent message.

To turn a column of these timestamps into dates in a spreadsheet, see convert a Unix timestamp to a date in Excel.

Jump to a date in a Slack conversation

To find messages from a past day, click the date divider above any message, such as Today. A Jump to... menu opens with Today, Last week, Last month, The very beginning, and Jump to a specific date, which opens a calendar. The options change from channel to channel, and Today goes to the first message of today, not the newest; our 500-message test is in Slack jump to date.

Show Slack times in a 24-hour clock

Slack shows AM and PM by default. To switch, click your profile picture, choose Preferences, then Messages & media. Check Show times with 24-hour clock. On a phone, Slack follows the clock format of the device.

Time zones: whose time is Slack showing?

Every timestamp in Slack is shown in your own time zone, not the sender's. A message a coworker in London sent at 9:00 their time shows as 4:00 AM for someone in New York. Your zone is set under Preferences, Language & region, and Slack can set it from your computer automatically.

To see what time it was for the sender, open their profile. It shows their local time. Or paste the time into our Slack timezone converter. If a timestamp looks hours off, check your own time zone setting first.

What else Slack records about a message

• Edits. An edited message shows an (edited) label, but not the old text. See does Slack show edited messages.

• Read time. Slack has no read receipts, so you cannot see when someone read a message. See does Slack have read receipts.

• Views on big announcements. On Business+ and Enterprise plans, owners, admins and Message Activity Managers can open View message activity on messages in channels with 50 or more members. It shows view counts over time, not a list of times per person.

• Last active. Coworkers cannot see when you were last online. Details are in does Slack show last seen.

FAQ

Can Slack show seconds in timestamps?

Not in the message list, which shows hours and minutes. Hover over the time on desktop and the tooltip includes seconds. The message link gives microseconds.

Why does Slack say 2 hours ago instead of a time?

Some lists, such as threads and Activity, use relative times. Hover over it on desktop, or open the message on a phone.

Why is the Slack timestamp wrong?

Slack shows times in your own time zone. Check Preferences, Language & region.