# Python Get Current Time With datetime and zoneinfo

> Call datetime.now() to get the current date and time as a datetime object, add zoneinfo for time zone support, or use time.time() for Unix timestamps

**URL:** https://sentry.io/answers/get-the-current-time-in-python/

---

## The Problem

How do I get the current time in Python?

## The Solution

We can get the current time using the `now` method in Python's built-in `datetime` library. For example:

```python
from datetime import datetime

current_time = datetime.now()
```

`current_time` will contain a `datetime` object containing the date and time values for the instant at which the function was called. This can be accessed and displayed in a number of different ways:

```python
print(current_time)        # will print the full date and time
print(current_time.time()) # will print the time of day only
print(current_time.date()) # will print the calendar date only
```

Note that the `datetime` object stored in `current_time` is not aware of time zones. To get the current time for a specific time zone, use the [`zoneinfo`](https://docs.python.org/3/library/zoneinfo.html) module, which is part of the standard library since Python 3.9:

```python
from datetime import datetime
from zoneinfo import ZoneInfo

current_time = datetime.now(ZoneInfo("US/Pacific"))

print(current_time)             # will print the full date and time with time zone offset from UTC
print(current_time.time())      # will print the time of day only
print(current_time.date())      # will print the calendar date only
print(current_time.utcoffset()) # will print the offset from UTC time
```

In legacy codebases running Python 3.8 or earlier, you may see the third-party `pytz` library used instead. For new projects, prefer `zoneinfo` as it requires no additional dependencies.

Alternatively, if we want to work with [Unix time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_time) rather than datetime objects, we can use Python's [`time`](https://docs.python.org/3/library/time.html) module. The current Unix time is returned by [`time.time()`](https://docs.python.org/3/library/time.html#time.time):

```python
import time

print(time.time()) # will print the current Unix time as a floating point number
```

---

*Source: [sentry.io/answers/get-the-current-time-in-python/](https://sentry.io/answers/get-the-current-time-in-python/)*