Glossary / Developer basics
Glossary · Developer basics · checked Oct 24, 2026
Unix timestamp
Short answerA Unix timestamp counts seconds since 00:00:00 UTC on January 1, 1970, ignoring leap seconds. Many systems use milliseconds instead, which is a factor of 1,000 to watch for.
Why it matters
Signed 32-bit timestamps overflow on January 19, 2038 (the Year 2038 problem).
Our number
Our Unix timestamp converter handles seconds and milliseconds and shows your local time.
Go deeper on this site
Where it shows up here
It appears on 12 pages of this site: 5 Free tools, 4 Articles, 1 The Manual, 1 Guide, 1 path. A few to start with:
- Rust, LLMs, AI agents and app dev, with the receipts.
- App development.
- Q.UUIDv7 vs UUIDv4: which should you use?
- How to extract the timestamp from a UUIDv7
- Cron expression translator.
- JWT decoder.
- IDs and timestamps that sort.
Sources
- POSIX: seconds since the Epoch: pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/basedefs/V1_chap04.html (checked Oct 24, 2026)
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Up next
Go deeperUnix timestamp converterThe page on this site that does the most with this term.Read it next →Also worth your time
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