<input type="time">

<input> elements of type time create input fields designed to let the user easily enter a time (hours and minutes, and optionally seconds).

The control's user interface will vary from browser to browser. Support is good in modern browsers, with Safari being the sole major browser not yet implementing it; in Safari, and any other browsers that don't support <time>, it degrades gracefully to <input type="text">.

<input id="time" type="time">

Appearance

Chrome and Opera

In Chrome/Opera the time control is simple, with slots to enter hours and minutes (in 24-hour format), and up and down arrows to increment and decrement the currently selected component. An "X" button is provided to clear the control's value.

Firefox

Firefox's time control is very similar to Chrome's, except that it doesn't have the up and down arrows and it is a 12 hour clock (with an additional slot to specify AM or PM).

Edge

The Edge time control is somewhat more elaborate, opening up an hour and minute picker with sliding reels. It, like Chrome, uses a 24-hour format for inputting times:

Value

A DOMString containing the value of the time entered into the input. You can set a default value for the input by including a valid time in the value attribute when creating the <input> element, like so:

<label for="appt-time">Choose an appointment time: </label>
<input id="appt-time" type="time" name="appt-time" value="13:30">

You can also get and set the date value in JavaScript using the HTMLInputElement.value property, for example:

var timeControl = document.querySelector('input[type="time"]');
timeControl.value = '15:30';

Time value format

The value of the time input is always in 24-hour format: "hh:mm", regardless of the input format, which is likely to be selected based on the user's locale (or by the user agent). If the time includes seconds (see Using the step attribute), the format is always "hh:mm:ss".

In this example, you can see the time input's value by entering a time and seeing how it changes afterward.

First, a look at the HTML. This is simple enough, with the label and input as we've seen before, but with the addition of a <p> element with a <span> to display the value of the time input:

<form>
  <label for="startTime">Start time: </label>
  <input type="time" id="startTime">
  <p>
    Value of the <code>time</code> input: <code>
            "<span id="value">n/a</span>"</code>.
  </p>
</form>

The JavaScript code adds code to the time input to watch for the input event, which is triggered every time the contents of an input element change. When this happens, the contents of the <span> are replaced with the new value of the input element.

var startTime = document.getElementById("startTime");
var valueSpan = document.getElementById("value");

startTime.addEventListener("input", function() {
  valueSpan.innerText = startTime.value;
}, false);

When a form including a time input is submitted, the value is encoded before being included in the form's data. The form's data entry for a time input will always be in the form "name=hh%3Amm", or "name=hh%3Amm%3ass" if seconds are included (see Using the step attribute).

Using time inputs

Although among the date and time input types time has the widest browser support, it is not yet approaching universal, so it is likely that you'll need to provide an alternative method for entering the date and time, so that Safari users (and users of other non-supporting browsers) can still easily enter time values.

We'll look at basic and more complex uses of <input type="time">, then offer advice on mitigating the browser support issue later on (see Handling browser support).

Basic uses of time

The simplest use of <input type="time"> involves a basic <input> and <label> element combination, as seen below:

<form>
  <label for="appt-time">Choose an appointment time: </label>
  <input id="appt-time" type="time" name="appt-time">
</form>

Controlling input size

<input type="time"> doesn't support form sizing attributes such as size, since times are always about the same number of characters long. You'll have to resort to CSS for sizing needs.

Using the step attribute

You can use the step attribute to vary the amount of time jumped whenever the time is incremented or decremented (for example, so the time moves by 10 minutes at a time when clicking the little arrow widgets).

It takes an integer value that equates to the number of seconds you want to increment by; the default value is 60 seconds, or one minute. If you specify a value of less than 60 seconds (1 minute), the time input will show a seconds input area alongside the hours and minutes:

<form>
  <label for="appt-time">Choose an appointment time: </label>
  <input id="appt-time" type="time" name="appt-time" step="2">
</form>

In Chrome and Opera, which are the only browsers to show up/down iteration arrows, clicking the arrows changes the seconds value by two seconds, but doesn't affect the hours or minutes. Minutes (or hours) can only be used for stepping when you specify a number of minutes (or hours) in seconds, such as 120 for 2 minutes, or 7200 for 2 hours).

In Firefox, there are no arrows, so the step value isn't used. However, providing it does add the seconds input area adjacent to the minutes section.

The steps value seems to have no effect in Edge.

Validation

By default, <input type="time"> does not apply any validation to entered values, other than the user agent's interface generally not allowing you to enter anything other than a time value. This is helpful (assuming the time input is fully supported by the user agent), but you can't entirely rely on the value to be a proper time string, since it might be an empty string (""), which is allowed. It's also possible for the value to look roughly like a valid time but not be correct, such as "25:05" to be ut you can still not fill in a datetime and submit, or enter an invalid datetime (e.g. the 32th of April).

Setting maximum and minimum times

You can use the min and max attributes to restrict the valid times that can be chosen by the user. In the following example we are setting a minimum time of 12:00 and a maximum time of 18:00:

<form>
  <label for="appt-time">Choose an appointment time (opening hours 12:00 to 18:00): </label>
  <input id="appt-time" type="time" name="appt-time"
         min="12:00" max="18:00">
  <span class="validity"></span>
</form>

Here's the CSS used in the above example. Here we make use of the :valid and :invalid CSS properties to style the input based on whether or not the current value is valid. We had to put the icons on a <span> next to the input, not on the input itself, because in Chrome the generated content is placed inside the form control, and can't be styled or shown effectively.

div {
  margin-bottom: 10px;
  position: relative;
}

input[type="number"] {
  width: 100px;
}

input + span {
  padding-right: 30px;
}

input:invalid+span:after {
  position: absolute;
  content: '✖';
  padding-left: 5px;
}

input:valid+span:after {
  position: absolute;
  content: '✓';
  padding-left: 5px;
}

The result here is that:

• Only times between 12:00 and 18:00 will be seen as valid; times outside that range will be denoted as invalid.
• Depending on what browser you're using, you might find that times outside the specified range might not even be selectable in the time picker (e.g. Edge).

Making times required

In addition, you can use the required attribute to make filling in the time mandatory. As a result, supporting browsers will display an error if you try to submit a time that is outside the set bounds, or an empty time field.

Let's look at an example; here we've set minimum and maximum times, and also made the field required:

<form>
  <div>
    <label for="appt-time">Choose an appointment time (opening hours 12:00 to 18:00): </label>
    <input id="appt-time" type="time" name="appt-time"
           min="12:00" max="18:00" required>
    <span class="validity"></span>
  </div>
  <div>
      <input type="submit" value="Submit form">
  </div>
</form>

If you try to submit the form with an incomplete date (or with a date outside the set bounds), the browser displays an error. Try playing with the example now:

Here's a screenshot for those of you who aren't using a browser that supports time inputs:

Handling browser support

As mentioned above, Safari and a few other, less common, browsers don't yet support time inputs natively. In general, otherwise, support is good — especially on mobile platforms, which tend to have very nice user interfaces for specifying a time value. For example, the time picker on Chrome for Android looks like this:

Browsers that don't support time inputs gracefully degrade to a text input, but this creates problems both in terms of consistency of user interface (the presented control will be different), and data handling.

The second problem is the more serious; as mentioned previously, time inputs' values are always normalized to the format hh:mm or hh:mm:ss. With a text input, on the other hand, by default the browser has no idea of what format the time should be in, and there multiple ways in which people write times, such as:

• 3.00 pm
• 3:00pm
• 15:00
• 3 o'clock in the afternoon
• etc.

One way around this is to put a pattern attribute on your time input. Even though the time input doesn't use it, the text input fallback will. For example, try viewing the following demo in a browser that doesn't support time inputs:

<form>
  <div>
    <label for="appt-time">Choose an appointment time (opening hours 12:00 to 18:00): </label>
    <input id="appt-time" type="time" name="appt-time"
           min="12:00" max="18:00" required
           pattern="[0-9]{2}:[0-9]{2}">
    <span class="validity"></span>
  </div>
  <div>
      <input type="submit" value="Submit form">
  </div>
</form>

If you try submitting it, you'll see that non-supporting browsers now display an error message (and highlight the input as invalid) if your entry doesn't match the pattern nn:nn, where n is a number from 0 to 9. Of course, this doesn't stop people from entering invalid dates, or incorrectly formatted dates that follow the pattern.

Then there's the problem of the user having no idea exactly what format the time is expected to be in.

The best way to deal with times in forms in a cross-browser way, for the time being, is to get the user to enter the hours and minutes (and seconds if required) in separate controls (<select> elements are popular; see below for an example), or use JavaScript libraries such as the jQuery timepicker plugin.

Examples

In this example, we create two sets of interface elements for choosing times: a native picker created with <input type="time">, and a set of two <select> elements for choosing hours/minutes in older browsers that don't support the native input.

The HTML looks like so:

<form>
  <div class="nativeTimePicker">
    <label for="appt-time">Choose an appointment time (opening hours 12:00 to 18:00): </label>
      <input id="appt-time" type="time" name="appt-time"
             min="12:00" max="18:00" required>
      <span class="validity"></span>
    </div>
  <p class="fallbackLabel">Choose an appointment time (opening hours 12:00 to 18:00):</p>
  <div class="fallbackTimePicker">
    <div>
      <span>
        <label for="hour">Hour:</label>
        <select id="hour" name="hour">
        </select>
      </span>
      <span>
        <label for="minute">Minute:</label>
        <select id="minute" name="minute">
        </select>
      </span>
    </div>
  </div>
</form>

The hour and minutes values for their <select> elements are dynamically generated.

The other part of the code that may be of interest is the feature detection code — to detect whether the browser supports <input type="time">, we create a new <input> element, set its type to time, then immediately check what its type is set to — non-supporting browsers will return text, because the time type falls back to type text. If <input type="time"> is not supported, we hide the native picker and show the fallback picker UI (<select>s) instead.

// define variables
var nativePicker = document.querySelector('.nativeTimePicker');
var fallbackPicker = document.querySelector('.fallbackTimePicker');
var fallbackLabel = document.querySelector('.fallbackLabel');

var hourSelect = document.querySelector('#hour');
var minuteSelect = document.querySelector('#minute');

// hide fallback initially
fallbackPicker.style.display = 'none';
fallbackLabel.style.display = 'none';

// test whether a new date input falls back to a text input or not
var test = document.createElement('input');
test.type = 'time';
// if it does, run the code inside the if() {} block
if(test.type === 'text') {
  // hide the native picker and show the fallback
  nativePicker.style.display = 'none';
  fallbackPicker.style.display = 'block';
  fallbackLabel.style.display = 'block';

  // populate the hours and minutes dynamically
  populateHours();
  populateMinutes();
}

function populateHours() {
  // populate the hours <select> with the 6 open hours of the day
  for(var i = 12; i <= 18; i++) {
    var option = document.createElement('option');
    option.textContent = i;
    hourSelect.appendChild(option);
  }
}

function populateMinutes() {
  // populate the minutes <select> with the 60 hours of each minute
  for(var i = 0; i <= 59; i++) {
    var option = document.createElement('option');
    option.textContent = (i < 10) ? ("0" + i) : i;
    minuteSelect.appendChild(option);
  }
}

// make it so that if the hour is 18, the minutes value is set to 00
// — you can't select times past 18:00
 function setMinutesToZero() {
   if(hourSelect.value === '18') {
     minuteSelect.value = '00';
   }
 }

 hourSelect.onchange = setMinutesToZero;
 minuteSelect.onchange = setMinutesToZero;

Specifications

Browser compatibility

See also

• The generic <input> element and the interface used to manipulate it, HTMLInputElement
• Date and Time picker tutorial
• <input type="datetime-local">, <input type="date">, <input type="week">, and <input type="month">