Date Time Shortcut

When writing Markdown in VS Code it’s useful to be able to insert the current date and time quickly. You can do this by setting up a keyboard shortcut¹ that inserts the current date and time in a specific format.

To set up a date time shortcut in VS Code, follow these steps:

1. Open the command palette by pressing Ctrl+Shift+P (or Cmd+Shift+P on macOS).
2. Type “Preferences: Open Keyboard Shortcuts (JSON)” and select it.
3. Add the following JSON snippet to your keybindings.json file

   1},
   2{
   3    "key": "ctrl+d t",
   4    "command": "editor.action.insertSnippet",
   5    "when": "editorTextFocus",
   6    "args": {
   7        "snippet": "$CURRENT_YEAR-$CURRENT_MONTH-${CURRENT_DATE}T$CURRENT_HOUR:$CURRENT_MINUTE:$CURRENT_SECOND.000"
   8    }
   9}
   

4. Save the file.
5. Now, whenever you press Ctrl+d t (or your chosen key combination), it will insert the current date and time in the format YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.000.