See "real" commit date / time in github (hour/day)

Is there a way to see the date of a commit in github, with day/hour precision? Older commits appear in a "human readable" format, such as "2 years ago" instead of showing the actual date.

If it's not possible to see the actual date on github, is there a easier workaround than git clone?

Hover your mouse over the 2 years ago and you'll get the timestamp.

The real date does not appear for me upon hovering "2 years ago", despite the text being wrapped by a <time> element with an iso value under its datetime attribute.

If all else fails, like it did for me, try inspecting the text.

Sample element:

<time datetime="2015-01-22T20:48:13Z" is="relative-time" title="Jan 22, 2015, 2:48 PM CST">7 days ago</time>

you can just use this js bookmark:

javascript:(function() { 
        var relativeTimeElements = window.document.querySelectorAll("relative time");
        relativeTimeElements.forEach(function(timeElement){
        timeElement.innerHTML = timeElement.innerHTML +" -- "+ timeElement.title;
        })
    }()
)

https://gist.github.com/PhilippGrulich/7051832b344d4cbd30fbfd68524baa38

It adds just the correct time: Like this: committed 21 hours ago -- 15. Feb. 2017, 15:49 MEZ

If you're looking for a way to display the date/time permanently without hovering (e.g. for screenshots), the above Javascript-based solutions do not match the latest Github HTML (see comments). And they did not take into account the fact that the timestamps are auto-updated based on a timer ("X minutes ago" has to change every minute), so they will periodically reappear.

The following script seems to work on Github as of 2020-01-27:

(function() {
    var els = window.document.querySelectorAll("time-ago,relative-time");
    els.forEach(function(el) {
        el.innerHTML = "on " + el.getFormattedTitle(); // original timestamp
        el.disconnectedCallback(); // stop auto-updates
    });
})();

You can make this a bookmarklet by prefixing the code with javascript: as in the other JS-based solution.

And if you want to make this a permanent fix, you can save this as a TamperMonkey/Greasemonkey script, as follows:

// ==UserScript==
// @name         Github: always show absolute times
// @match        https://github.com/*
// ==/UserScript==

(function() {
    setTimeout(function() {
        var els = window.document.querySelectorAll("time-ago,relative-time");
        els.forEach(function(el) {
            el.innerHTML += ' <span class="text-small">(' + el.title + ')</span>'; // set original timestamp
            el.disconnectedCallback(); // stop auto-updates
        });
    }, 100); // YMMV, experiment with the timeout
})();

That's not very pretty but it seems to do the job.

I tried @odony's TamperMonkey/Greasemonkey script on Chrome but couldn't get it to work. detachCallback() wasn't recognized. So instead of detaching any callbacks, I simply replaced the <relative-time> node.

// ==UserScript==
// @name         Github: always show absolute times
// @match        https://github.com/*
// ==/UserScript==

(function() {
    document.querySelectorAll("relative-time").forEach(function(el) {
        var parent = el.parentNode;
        var timestamp = el.title;
        var span = document.createElement("span");
        span.innerHTML = timestamp;
        parent.removeChild(el);
        parent.appendChild(span);
    });
})();

Sorry I haven't tested this with other browser, but since this is basic javascript, it should just work. :)

With a user stylesheet plugin (I'm using stylebot in chrome)

time {
  font-size: 0;
}
time:after {
    content: attr(data-original-title);
    font-size: 14px;
}

Update 2021: a bookmarklet remains the only option on GitHub.
See for instance "Displaying Real Commit Times in GitHub" from Justin Noel

javascript:(function() {    
  var style = document.createElement('style');
  document.head.appendChild(style);
  var sheet = style.sheet;
  sheet.addRule('time-ago:before,relative-time:before', 'content: attr(title);display: block;font-size: 0.5rem;');  
})()

---

This contrasts with GitLab 14.1 (July 2021)

> ## User setting to display absolute times > > GitLab displays relative times (for example, 30 minutes ago) in a lot of places. > > You can now change your user profile preferences to display absolute times instead, for example, ‘May 18, 2021, 3:57 PM’. > > Absolute times respect your browser settings and format dates and times based on your preferred locales, for example, British English over US English. > > This new display option gives more information at a glance for users that need it for workflows like correlating actions in GitLab to external systems. > > > > See Documentation and Issue.

With gitlab 10 I used this to add the tooltip title to the element as standard text:

javascript:(function() { 
  var relativeTimeElements = window.document.querySelectorAll("time");
  relativeTimeElements.forEach(function(timeElement){
    timeElement.innerHTML = timeElement.innerHTML +" -- "+ timeElement.getAttribute('data-original-title');
  })
}());