Dates

{{date}} is today, in the format you chose in Settings. {{date:MMMM yyyy}} is today in a format of its own, for that one use. This page covers both, the letters a format is made of, and the two places a date comes from something other than the clock.

Today, in your format

{{date}} produces today's date and {{year}} the four-digit year. Both are built in, so a template never asks for them: the deploy prompt shows them already filled.

The format is a setting, Date format under General in Settings. Pick one of the five examples or type a format of your own, and the line underneath shows what today would look like. Changing it changes what the next deploy writes, and nothing already on disk.

A format for one use

Name the format after a colon: {{date:MMMM yyyy}} gives January 2026 whatever the setting says. It works wherever a placeholder does - folder and file names, file contents, Word and Excel documents, a command - and inside a watched folder's rename and subfolder patterns.

A template can carry several. A folder named {{date:yyyy}} with a folder named {{date:MMMM}} inside it files by year and month, while a README.md in the same template opens with {{date:EEEE d MMMM yyyy}} and is dated Thursday 15 January 2026.

Time is the same letters: {{date:yyyy-MM-dd HH-mm}} stamps a folder to the minute, and {{date:HH:mm}} in a file's contents writes 14:31.

The format is required. {{date:}} is not a date and is left as written.

The letters

The format is a standard date pattern. The letters used most often:

The letters are case sensitive: MM is the month and mm the minute, which is the mistake behind most "wrong" dates. Anything that is not a letter - a hyphen, a space, a comma, a full stop - is written as it is. Month and weekday names come out in your MacPC's language.

In a folder or file name

In a folder or file name a : becomes -, as does /: a slash would nest, and a colon is not a character a file name can safely carry. So {{date:HH:mm}} names a file 14-31 and dates a line inside it 14:31.

The move to subfolder rule in a watched folder is the exception, because there a slash is meant. {{date:yyyy}}/{{date:MM}} files things two deep. See Rule reference.

Always the moment it is used

A formatted date is worked out each time it is used, never stored. At deploy that makes no difference: {{date}} and {{date:yyyy-MM-dd}} say the same thing.

In a watched folder they part company. The folder's bare {{date}} is frozen with the rest of its values on the day it was deployed, as the rules are. {{date:yyyy-MM}} in a rename rule is the month the file arrived. A rule that files by month wants the formatted one.

The same holds in reverse. A deploy that supplies its own values - a deploy link, a script, an agent - can give {{date}} whatever it likes, and that value is written as given. The formatted form takes no value and is always now.

A date you are asked for

A placeholder whose type is Date is one the deploy prompt asks for, like any other. Its field is text, so what you type is what is written.

Its default can be Today, which is worked out on the day the template is used, in your Settings format, not the day the default was chosen. See Defining a placeholder.

Dates of files in a watched folder

Two more placeholders are dates, and neither is today. In a rename rule, {{captured}} is when a photo was taken, from its EXIF data, and {{file_date}} is when the file was created. Both take a format the same way: {{captured:yyyy-MM}}. See Rule reference.