Simplify date display

Brainstorm
1

This is an idea of mine for a while, currently we display dates in dolphin:

  • either it recent, and we show Today at 14:00 Yesterday at 14:00 (can be opt-out)
  • Or the full date “26/10/2025 at 09:15” for instance.

I think we can do better, to make it easier to read dates, by reducing the precision used to display them and using human spelling:

  • If the date is not today, don’t display the exact hour: “Yesterday” instead of “Yesterday at 10:00”, or maybe “Yesterday morning”.
  • Use “Last Tuesday” for up to seven days prior, or with AM/PM “Last Tuesday morning”
  • Same way for days earlier, skip the hour and since this is shorter we can display humanly spelled: “October 26th” and since it is the current year we can also omit the year.
  • And for created another year we could omit the precise day “October 2024”, or more detailed “October 26th 2024”.

This would take some effort to implement, and a lot of work for translators.
I would be curious to know whether this makes any sense and if this could be useful for users. Also which settings would be needed to satisfy most users.

Needless to say this still would be opt-out, many users need precise dates for their workflow.
The information could still display the full date, for when you need to see precisely.

And this might be used outside of dolphin.

Some cultures might not fit right in this scheme, in particular the 7-day week. I am from western cultural so I am biased, but I’d be curious to know if that could work.

2

seems fine the way it is.

if i’m coming back to a project that i was working a couple of days ago with multiple saves on that day i might need to know times to figure out where i left off and currently that info is right there without any effort on my part.

2 Likes
3

The sort will still be unaffected, meaning if you order by date you can see the sequence of edition.

In particular the hours hiding indeed. This could be conditional also, sort of like for dynamic view settings.

4

Something I appreciate in Plasma is the ability to use relative and humanised formats, without losing details.

This is definitely something worth discussing… and while we’re at it, appreciating the current state of affairs (something I enjoyed from the first time I started using Dolphin and started to get used to the weird way it handles splits and tabs);

  1. Today at 2:30pm or Today at 14:00 is clean and instantly understandable. Don’t touch that!

  2. Yesterday - is it really useful to shorten the original: Yesterday at 2:30pm or Yesterday at 14:30 is perfect IMO.

  3. Last 7 Days (but not Today/Yesterday):
    – Sunday at 2.45pm
    – Sunday at 14:45
    These are okay - but we’re losing (need to remember) the date now… so
    – Sunday 16th at 2.45pm feels better

  • more compact
    – Sun 16th at 2.45pm
    – Sun 16th @ 2.45pm
  1. Last Tuesday at 2.49pm is slightly problematic because the date isn’t included, but fine if there’s a tooltip when I hover '31/10/2025`…

NOTE: Why don’t I see a tooltip when I hover the date? is it my settings?

✘ Last Tuesday at ten to three

✘ Last Tuesday at quarter to three

✘ Last Tuesday around 3pm

:check_mark: Tues 11/10/2025 at 2.49pm

:check_mark: Tues 11/10/2025 at 14:49

Also, don’t forget ISO;

:check_mark: 2025-10-11_14:49:00 with Human readable Day/date in tooltip.

I’m not sure about other languages…

Just handling American vs English is tough enough for me

11/10/2025
10/11/2025

I much prefer to see:
11th October
November 10th
depending on the locale (if someone showed me a screenshot, for example, 11/10/2025 is messed up by those Americans…

I will instinctively make files with names like: 2025-11-10_14:49.jpg for an image taken on the 10th of October at ten to three for listing by name purposes, so ISO is a good option.

In English, I like to see st/nd/rd/th (e.g., October 1st, 2nd, 26th)… I agree that THIS year is just noise.

Previous years:

  • :check_mark: 2023-10-26_19:25

  • :check_mark:26/10/2023 at 19:25

  • :check_mark: 26/10/2023 at 7.25pm

  • :check_mark: Thursday 26th October 2023 at 7.25pm

  • :check_mark: Thu 26th Oct 2023 at 7.25pm

Need settings with options:

  1. Relative & Humanized (Normal)

  2. Relative and Humanised (Compact)

  3. Precise (Today/Yesterday at HH:MM)

  4. ISO full date and time

Tooltips:

100% required IMHO - the full, precise ISO-8601 or locale-specific timestamp (e.g., 2025-10-26 09:15:00) should always be available in a tooltip when hovering over the humanized date. Conversely, the Humanised version when hovering over the ISO version.

So yes, let me now go and work out why I don’t get a tooltip when I hover the modification time… I find the whole ‘info’ popup to be rather too large and cumbersome, is that the only option?

Ok, so from looking at this, I actually disabled the ‘information on hover’ because the only option seems to be a huge overlay, not contextual tooltips.

Hovering over a file shows interesting (but limited) information in the status bar, but hovering over the date does not.

I would like to see this addressed first…

:vulcan_salute: