DateDrop — drop a formatted date or time anywhere with a hotkey
Hey r/MacApps. Posting per Tier 1 (Mac App Store). Problem I kept losing 30 seconds every time I needed to share a meeting time across time zones, paste a timestamp into a doc, or write "next Tuesday at 3 PM" in a way that wouldn't get misread. Switching apps to find a date, copying it, formatting it, pasting it. DateDrop is a single global hotkey (default Ctrl+Shift+Cmd+D) that pops a small picker over whatever you're in. Pick a date, pick a time, pick the zones, hit Insert. The formatted string lands at your cursor. Comparison Raycast date snippets / Alfred snippets. Both can spit out a formatted date, but they assume a single fixed format and a single zone. Adding a second zone or switching from "Apr 24, 8 PM PDT" to "ISO 8601" means editing the snippet definition. DateDrop is built around the case where you actually want to pick the format and the zones inline, every time. Multi-zone output is sorted west to east automatically. Fantastical / Day-O. Both are great for what they do (calendar, menu-bar clock), but neither is for inserting a formatted string into the app you're typing in. DateDrop is not a calendar. It's a one-purpose paste tool. What DateDrop does that those don't, in short: Picks any number of time zones with one-click favorite chips. Output sorted earliest-to-latest local time. Inline or stacked layouts for multi-zone output. Real format options: short, medium, long, ISO 8601, RFC 2822, Unix timestamp, custom strftime. Live preview as you tweak. Date and/or time only, single moment or a range with a "to" toggle. Menu-bar popover or detachable floating window. Native SwiftUI/AppKit. Tiny binary, no background services, no telemetry, no account. Pricing Free. macOS 13 Ventura or later, Apple Silicon. Mac App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6762940431 (Direct DMG with Sparkle auto-updates also available at https://bendansby.com/apps/datedrop.html for folks who'd rather skip the App Store.) Disclosure: I'm the developer. Happy to take feedback or feature requests.
Collected discussion
You already mention Raycast as a comparison point. If DateDrop can expose a small URL scheme / CLI / local action, a Raycast command could become the lightweight entry point while the app still owns the actual picker, formats, time zones, and insertion behavior. That would meet people where they already are.
Done — DateDrop 1.2.5 (just pushed) now handles datedrop://open (summon the picker) and datedrop://insert (insert with current settings, no UI). One-liner for a Raycast Script Command: #!/bin/bash # u/raycast.title DateDrop # u/raycast.mode silent open "datedrop://open"
Nice idea! Might have to do that.
This is really useful! I’ll give it a try. But honestly, it does look a bit cluttered.
Hope you find it useful! And agreed. It was a struggle to fit everything I wanted into a small package that felt convenient. Worth giving it another pass, though.
Nothing drastic, but cleaned it up a bit. Will ship in the next release.
Looking forward to it.
Hello ! I know I am not a mod but please follow the rules or your post gets deleted https://www.reddit.com/r/macapps/comments/1ryaeex/rmacapps_mods_went_too_far_whats_changing_phase_3/
Thanks for the heads up!
Can you make this available in the EU?
I think I just filled out the appropriate form to make that happen, hopefully it works!
Might be time to process, it seems. EU regulations.
I downloaded it as dmg, works well, you can try, same thing.
Beautiful, useful app. Quick question. I specified Option-Command-B as key combo. That activates your app... but when I click Insert, it fails to paste the date into text file.... or even this dialogue box. Am I doing something wrong? Thanks.
Ugh, may be a permissions issue. Try going to System Settings > Privacy & Security > Accessibility or open "x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preference.security?Privacy_Accessibility" and add, delete and re-add, enable, and/or disable and re-enable DateDrop. I'll also see if there's a way to avoid the issue cropping up in the future for the next update. If it's not working for now, there's always Copy 😅. Sorry about the trouble!
OK, Apple seemingly makes it hard for this flow to be elegant, but I think I eliminated the silent failure. Update available for web site version available now, Mac App Store to come. Thanks for the report!
Hey, could you add a German translation? The app idea is great but its pretty useless without translations. I'd like to use it at work.
Good call! Hopefully machine translation is good enough. Available now from direct download updater and coming soon to Mac App Store.
I am getting a feeling that this should have been a plugin instead. What made you make it a standalone app.
Plugin for what? I made an app to offer a GUI with a variety of settings and options. Plus, apps are fun.
what’s the case for this over text replacements in system settings? i set up “ddtoday” → today’s date a year ago and never thought about it again
DateDrop lets you choose a custom date or time or time span in a variety of time zones and formats. If you've got a system that works for you, though, that works for me, too!
How does that work? Text replacements are static.
You could create an Alfred workflow to achieve the same thing. I don't have a need to switch formats all the time but perhaps some might find it useful. Good luck