Now, Today, IsToday, UTCNow, and UTCToday functions in Power Apps

Article
12/16/2022
4 minutes to read

Description

The Now function returns the current date and time as a date/time value.

The Today function returns the current date as a date/time value. The time portion is midnight. Today has the same value throughout a day, from midnight today to midnight tomorrow.

The IsToday function tests whether a date/time value is between midnight today and midnight tomorrow. This function returns a Boolean (true or false) value.

Now, Today, and IsToday functions work with the local time of the current user.

UTCNow, UTCToday, and IsUTCToday functions are the same as their non-UTC countrparts but work with time zone independent values and use Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).

Note

UTCNow, UTCToday, and IsUTCToday are only available in Microsoft Dataverse for Teams formula columns, and only for time-independent fields and values.
Now, Today, and IsToday are not available in Dataverse for Teams formula columns as evaluations are done without the knowledge of the current user’s local time zone.
More information: Work with formula table columns in Dataverse for Teams

See Date, Time, and DateTime in the data types documentation and working with dates and times for more information.

Volatile Functions

Now, Today, UTCNow, and UTCToday are volatile functions. These functions return a different value for each evaluation.

When used in a data flow formula, a volatile function will only return a different value if the formula in which it appears is reevaluated. If nothing else changes in the formula then it will have the same value throughout the execution of your app.

For example, a label control with Label1.Text = Now() will not change while your app is active. Only closing and reopening the app will result in a new value.

The function will be reevaluated if it is part of a formula in which something else has changed. For example, if we change our example to involve a slider control with Label1.Text = DateAdd( Now(), Slider1.Value, Minutes ) then the current time is retrieved each time the Slider control’s value changes and the label’s text property is reevaluated.

When used in a behavior formula, volatile functions will be evaluated each time the behavior formula is evaluated. See below for an example.

Syntax

Using the user’s local time

Now()

Today()

IsToday( DateTime )

DateTime – Required. The date/time value to test.

Using Coodinated Universal Time (UTC)

UTCNow()

UTCToday()

IsUTCToday( TimeZoneIndependentTime )

TimeZoneIndependentDateTime – Required. The time zone indepdenent date/time value to test.

Examples

For the examples in this section, the current time is 8:58 PM on July 11, 2021 in the Pacific Time Zone (UTC-8) and the language is en-us.

Formula	Description	Result
Text( Now(), “mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss” )	Retrieves the current date and time in the user’s time zone, and displays it as a string.	“07/11/2021 20:58:00”
Text( Today(), “mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss” )	Retrieves the current date only, leaving the time portion as midnight, and displays it as a string.	“07/12/2021 00:00:00”
IsToday( Now() )	Tests whether the current date and time is between midnight today and midnight tomorrow.	true
IsToday( Today() )	Tests whether the current date is between midnight today and midnight tomorrow.	true
Text( DateAdd( Now(), 12 ), “mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss” )	Retrieves the current date and time, adds 12 days to the result, and displays it as a string.	“07/23/2021 20:58:00”
Text( DateAdd( Today(), 12 ), “mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss” )	Retrieves the current date, adds 12 days to the result, and displays it as a string.	“07/23/2021 00:00:00”
IsToday( DateAdd( Now(), 12 ) )	Tests whether the current date and time, plus 12 days, is between midnight today and midnight tomorrow.	false
IsToday( DateAdd( Today(), 12 ) )	Tests whether the current date, plus 12 days, is between midnight today and midnight tomorrow.	false
Hour( UTCNow() )	Retrieves the current date and time in UTC and extracts the hour only, which is 8 hours ahead of local time.	4
Day( UTCToday() )	Retrives the current date only in UTC and extracts the day, which is 1 day ahead of local time.	12
IsUTCToday( UTCNow() )	Tests whether the current date and time is between midnight today and midnight tomorrow, all in UTC time.	true
IsUTCToday( UTCToday() )	Tests whether the current date is between midnight today and midnight tomorrow, all in UTC time.	true

Display a clock that updates in real time

Add a Timer control, set its Duration property to 1000, and set its Repeat property to true.

The timer will run for one second, automatically start over, and continue that pattern.
Set the control’s OnTimerEnd property to this formula:

Set( CurrentTime, Now() )

Whenever the timer starts over (after each second), this formula sets the CurrentTime global variable to the current value of the Now function.
Add a Label control, and set its Text property to this formula:

Text( CurrentTime, LongTime24 )

Use the Text function to format the date and time however you want, or set this property to just CurrentTime to show hours and minutes but not seconds.
Preview the app by pressing F5, and then start the timer by clicking or tapping it.

The label continually shows the current time, down to the second.
Set the timer’s AutoStart property to true and its Visible property to false.

The timer is invisible and starts automatically.
Set the screen’s OnStart property so that the CurrentTime variable has a valid value, as in this example:

Set(CurrentTime, Now())

The label appears as soon as the app starts (before the timer runs for a full second).