ToDo X has a number of “hidden” preferences; that is, preferences that cannot be viewed or changed from within the application itself. Two of these, named TimestampFormat and TimestampOption, are used to specify the format of timestamps that can be appended to the notes for a to-do item (or category) as described in the FAQ.
TimestampFormat and TimestampOption are text strings that may contain ordinary characters interspersed with formatting symbols such as those shown in the table below. A timestamp is generated from such a text string by replacing each formatting symbol with the appropriate value for the current date and time.
Ordinary letters (a–z, A–Z) are treated as formatting symbols even outside of a recognized symbol sequence, so any literal text in your format string that contains letters must be enclosed in single quotes.
For example, with TimestampFormat set to “'Today is' MMMM d, yyyy” a generated timestamp would look like “Today is January 1, 2026” (with the month, day and year of the current date).
For a complete list of the available date and time formatting symbols, see
Unicode Technical Standard #35 - Date Format Patterns.
| Symbol | Meaning |
|---|---|
| yy | year without century (00-99); note lower-case yy here |
| yyyy | year with century (such as 1990); note lower-case yyyy here |
| M | month as a decimal number, without a leading zero (1-12) |
| MM | month as a decimal number (01-12) |
| MMM | abbreviated month name |
| MMMM | full month name |
| d | day of the month as a decimal number, without a leading zero (1-31) |
| dd | day of the month as a decimal number (01-31) |
| DDD | day of the year as a decimal number (001-366) |
| EEE | abbreviated weekday name |
| EEEE | full weekday name |
| e | weekday as a decimal number, based on the locale’s first day of the week |
| a | AM/PM designation for the locale |
| h | hour based on a 12-hour clock as a decimal number, without a leading zero (1-12) |
| hh | hour based on a 12-hour clock as a decimal number (01-12) |
| HH | hour based on a 24-hour clock as a decimal number (00-23) |
| mm | minute as a decimal number (00-59) |
| ss | second as a decimal number (00-59) |
| SSS | milliseconds as a decimal number (000-999) |
| z | abbreviated time zone name (such as PDT) |
| zzzz | full time zone name (such as Pacific Daylight Time) |
| Z | time zone offset in hours and minutes from GMT (+HHMM) |
| '' | a literal single quote character is written as two single quotes |