DateDrop documentation

A tiny menu-bar app for dropping a perfectly formatted date and time anywhere. Tap a hotkey, pick a format and time zones, and copy or insert. This page walks through every part of it.

There is an iPhone and iPad app too, running the same formatting engine. Most of this page applies to it as written — the differences, and the things only it can do, are gathered under On iPhone and iPad.

Installation

DateDrop comes three ways. The download from bendansby.com/apps/datedrop is a standard .dmg — open it and drag DateDrop.app to your Applications folder. The App Store version installs and updates the usual way. The Setapp version is a one-time purchase, not part of a Setapp Membership subscription; it installs through the Setapp client, with no separate license key and no trial.

On iPhone and iPad it installs from the App Store like anything else, and it is the same purchase as the Mac App Store version — buy either and both are yours. Requires iOS 17 or later there, and macOS 14 Sonoma or later on the Mac. The direct-download build auto-updates via Sparkle; you can also check anytime via the ⋯ menu → Check for Updates…. The App Store and Setapp builds update through their own channels. See License for the differences between the three.

The hotkey

DateDrop lives in the menu bar and is summoned with a global hotkey — ⌃⇧⌘D by default. Press it from anywhere and the picker pops up right where you're working. Press it again, or Esc, to dismiss. You can rebind it in Preferences → Keyboard Shortcut.

The popover

The picker is a compact popover anchored to the menu-bar icon. Along the top: your hotkey, a Detach as window button, and a ⋯ (More options) menu with Preferences, Check for Updates, DateDrop Help, the license items, and Quit. Detaching turns the popover into a floating window with its own Close button; the same header button, now Move to menu bar, docks it back.

Date & time

By default DateDrop drops the current moment. You can also set a specific Date and Time in the When section — useful for "what time is the 3pm call in Tokyo?" planning, or for stamping a fixed date rather than now.

Natural-language input

Above the date and time controls sits a small text field with a ✨ hint. Type a phrase describing when you mean and press Return — the picker jumps to whatever you typed:

A green pulse and a ✓ confirm a successful parse; the field clears so you can type the next one. A red pulse means DateDrop couldn't make sense of what you typed — edit and try again. Range phrases (any two times joined by to, –, or through) automatically flip on the to switch (range mode) and set both ends in one shot.

The field works in your Mac's current language, but coverage varies by locale. English has the deepest support out of the box; German (nächsten Dienstag 15 Uhr), French (mardi prochain 15h), Spanish (próximo martes 15:00) and others parse the common patterns but may miss more idiomatic phrasing. The placeholder in each language shows a shape that reliably works.

Formats

Pick how the date reads from the Format menu:

The Preview shows exactly what will be copied before you commit. Custom… takes a standard date-format pattern (the yyyy-MM-dd family) so you can build whatever layout you need.

24-hour time

Preferences → Formatting → Use 24-hour time switches the clock between 12- and 24-hour. It affects Long, Medium, Short, Day of Week, and Time Only. ISO 8601, RFC 2822, Unix Timestamp, and Custom keep their canonical formats — those are defined by a standard, so DateDrop never bends them.

Time zones & favorites

DateDrop can render the same moment across several time zones at once. Time zones appear whenever Time is switched on. Add zones with the + button, and the picker shows each one's local time. When more than one zone is selected, the Inline / Lines toggle controls whether they're joined on one line or stacked.

Favorites

Star the zones you use most in Preferences → Time Zones. Favorites appear as one-click chips in the popover, so adding "London" or "Tokyo" to a drop is a single tap. Turn on Show starred only to hide the long list and keep just your favorites.

Copy vs. Insert

Two ways to get the formatted string out:

• Copy puts the string on the clipboard — paste it yourself with ⌘V. A brief Copied confirmation appears.
• Insert types the string straight into whatever app is in front, no pasting needed. This is the fastest path when you're mid-sentence somewhere.

Accessibility

Insert needs Accessibility permission, because it works by synthesizing a paste into the front app. The first time you use Insert, DateDrop explains why and offers an Open System Settings button — add DateDrop under System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility, enable it, and try again. Copy needs no permission at all.

On iPhone and iPad

The iPhone and iPad app builds a date exactly the way the Mac app does: the same plain-language field at the top, the same date and time controls, the same time zones, the same ten formats, the same 24-hour switch, and the same live preview. What differs is how you summon it and how the result leaves.

There is no menu bar to hang from and no hotkey, so you open it like any other app. And there is no frontmost app to type into — iOS gives no app a way to insert text into another — so the action bar ends in Copy and Share rather than Copy and Insert. Tapping the preview copies it too.

Two more differences worth knowing:

• iPad puts every time zone in a sidebar. Favorites first, then the full list, searchable by city, name or abbreviation — the same search the Mac picker uses, including the plain-city aliases, so “vegas” finds Los Angeles. Tap a row to include a zone in the output; tap its star to keep it at the top. On iPhone the list is a sheet, and your starred zones appear under the fields as one-tap chips.
• It remembers more than the Mac does. The Mac app stays running between summons, so it only ever needed to save your favorites. A phone app is closed and relaunched constantly, so the format, the date/time switches, your selected zones and the multi-zone layout are all saved too. The date itself is not: every launch starts at now, and the Now button in the toolbar returns to it whenever you like.

Settings — the gear in the top right — holds the 24-hour switch and your favorites list, where you can reorder them (the order is the chip order) or swipe one away. Add new ones from the time-zone list itself.

Shortcuts & Siri

On iPhone and iPad, DateDrop offers a Format Date action to the Shortcuts app — something the Mac app has no equivalent of. Hand it a date and it returns the formatted text, ready to pass into whatever comes next.

The action runs entirely on the device and returns text, so it drops straight into a shortcut wired to the Action button, tapped from the Home Screen, or asked for by voice. It reads two things from the app — your 24-hour preference and your saved custom pattern — because those are settings you chose deliberately; everything else is a parameter you pass, so the same shortcut gives the same answer every time.

Menu bar

Preferences → Menu Bar → Show icon in menu bar toggles the icon. If you hide it, re-open DateDrop from Finder to get back to Preferences. The hotkey keeps working whether or not the icon is shown.

Keyboard shortcuts

Preferences → Keyboard Shortcut rebinds the summon hotkey. Each shortcut needs at least one modifier (⌃ ⌥ ⇧ ⌘); a Reset chip restores the default.

Languages

DateDrop is localized into English, Deutsch, Español, Français, Italiano, 日本語, 한국어, Português (Brasil), Українська, Русский, and 简体中文. It picks the right language automatically based on your System Settings → General → Language & Region preferences.

To pin DateDrop to a specific language without changing system preferences, open System Settings → General → Language & Region → Applications, click the + button, and pick DateDrop. On iPhone and iPad the equivalent is Settings → DateDrop → Language.

License

DateDrop ships through three channels — pick the one that fits how you like to pay for software:

• Direct download. Every feature works from the first launch — no locked controls. After a 7-day grace period, an unlicensed copy shows a brief license reminder every fifth time you open the picker; a one-time license clears it for good. Buy via the ⋯ menu → Buy DateDrop…; activate via Enter License…. Activation needs the internet briefly, then works offline; DateDrop revalidates quietly in the background so refunded or revoked keys stop working.
• App Store. Paid once through Apple’s standard pipeline — no separate license key. Offers Copy only (no Insert, per Apple’s guidelines). One purchase covers the Mac, iPhone and iPad apps.
• Setapp. A one-time purchase through Setapp — bought outright, not part of a Setapp Membership subscription. No separate license key; Setapp handles the purchase and delivers updates automatically. The app runs through the Setapp client, so keep it installed and your Setapp account active. Includes Insert, like the direct-download build.