Restore Full Date Timestamps in GNOME Files After an Ubuntu Upgrade

The "Today 13:52", "4 months ago" and "Last year" labels are not a malfunction. They are GNOME Files' built-in relative date style, and an upgrade to a newer GNOME release makes it the visible default. To get plain dates back, open the Files hamburger menu, go to Preferences → Date & Time, and choose the option that displays an actual calendar date — or run a single gsettings command described below.

Why the display changed after the upgrade

The Nautilus file manager behind GNOME Files supports three date formats: informal (relative), locale (formatted according to your regional settings), and iso (fixed ISO 8601 style). Current releases ship with the informal style as the default. It favours friendliness over precision: files modified today show only a time, recent files collapse to phrases like "4 months ago", and anything older than a year becomes "Last year". You lose the exact day and time entirely.

Your choice is stored per-user in the dconf database. Small updates normally preserve it, but a major version jump — such as 24.04 to 26.04, which moves you forward several GNOME releases — can reset a preference key or change which choices the dialog offers. A format you set years ago and forgot about can therefore silently fall back to the new default after the upgrade.

Switch the format in Files' own preferences

1. Open Files.
2. Click the ☰ (hamburger) button in the header bar and choose Preferences.
3. Locate the Date & Time section.
4. Select the entry whose sample shows a full calendar date and clock time (for example a "Mon 12 Jun 2022, 13:52"-style string) instead of the "Today 15:20" entry.
5. Close the dialog. The change applies to all open Files windows immediately — no restart needed.

Note that the option labels are live samples of each style, and their exact wording varies slightly between GNOME releases. Just pick the one showing a real date rather than a relative word.

Set it from the terminal instead

If you prefer the command line — or if your Files version's dialog does not offer the style you want — use gsettings. First check the current value:

gsettings get org.gnome.nautilus.preferences date-format

Then set the style you want:

gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.preferences date-format 'locale'

The three possible values are:

• informal — relative labels: "Today 13:52", "4 months ago", "Last year".
• locale — a full date formatted according to your system's regional settings.
• iso — the unambiguous ISO 8601 layout, e.g. 2024-06-12 13:52, which also sorts chronologically as text.

To return to the upgrade's default behaviour later, run:

gsettings set org.gnome.nautilus.preferences date-format 'informal'

or undo any customization completely with gsettings reset org.gnome.nautilus.preferences date-format.

Getting a specific layout such as mm/dd/yy

GNOME does not provide a free-form date template, so you cannot type in an arbitrary pattern like mm/dd/yy hh:mm:ss. Your realistic options are:

• iso — always YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM, ideal for sorting and scripting.
• locale — follows Settings → System → Region & Language → Formats. Choosing a region such as "United States" switches Files to that region's conventional month/day/year ordering. This is the closest match to the mm/dd/yy look.

Neither list-view option shows seconds. When you need the exact second, right-click the file and open Properties, hover over the Modified column, or use the terminal:

ls -l --full-time

Keep the setting through future upgrades

Because the preference lives in dconf, it survives reboots and normal package updates. Before a big release upgrade, it is worth backing up your Nautilus settings so you can restore them if the new version resets anything:

dconf dump /org/gnome/nautilus/ > nautilus-settings.ini

Restore after the upgrade with:

dconf load /org/gnome/nautilus/ < nautilus-settings.ini

After any major upgrade, glance at Preferences → Date & Time once; if GNOME renamed or reworked the setting, reapplying your choice takes only seconds.

Frequently Asked Questions

I never changed any setting — why did it change anyway?

The default itself is part of the GNOME release. When the upgrade pulls in a much newer Files version, it may reset your stored key or apply its own default, so the relative style appears even though you never touched Preferences.

My Preferences window has no Date & Time section. What now?

The dialog layout differs between GNOME releases. Use the gsettings commands above — they work regardless of what the dialog shows, provided the org.gnome.nautilus.preferences schema is present.

Does this affect the desktop clock or other applications?

No. The key only changes GNOME Files. System-wide date formats for the clock and most apps come from Settings → Region & Language → Formats.

Why do some files still show a relative date after switching?

Confirm the active value with gsettings get. If it reads locale or iso but the window still shows relative labels, close and reopen the Files window; the preference applies instantly, but an already-open window occasionally needs a refresh.

Can I see full timestamps without changing the format at all?

Yes. The Properties dialog always shows the complete modification date, and in a terminal ls -l --full-time prints second-precision timestamps for a directory listing.