The time and date (time_date) integration allows one to create sensors for the current date or time in different formats. All values are based on the timezone which is set in “General Configuration”.

To have these sensors available in your installation, add the following to your configuration.yaml file (each option creates a separate sensor that contains appropriate data, e.g., sensor.date for the date option):

# Example configuration.yaml entry
sensor:
  - platform: time_date
    display_options:
      - 'time'
      - 'date'
      - 'date_time'
      - 'date_time_utc'
      - 'date_time_iso'
      - 'time_date'
      - 'time_utc'
      - 'beat'

Sensors including the time update every minute, the date sensor updates each day at midnight, and the beat sensor updates with each beat (86.4 seconds).

Producing your own custom time and date sensor

The following can be used to create a time and date sensor whose output can be properly customised to use your own preferred formatting, specified in the call to timestamp_custom() using standard Python datetime formatting.

sensor:
  # Minimal configuration of the standard time and date sensor
  - platform: time_date
    display_options:
      - 'date_time_iso'
  # Build on the standard sensor to produce one that can be customized    
template:
  - sensor:
      - name: "Date and time"
        state: "{{ as_timestamp(states('sensor.date_time_iso')) | timestamp_custom('%A %B %-d, %I:%M %p') }}"
        icon: "mdi:calendar-clock"

More time-related resources

For more information about using time related variables and sensors in templates (such as today_at(), now() or as_timestamp()) visit this time section on the templating page.