Unix Timestamp in Go

Go's time package provides Unix() and UnixMilli() methods on time.Time. These are simple, idiomatic, and don't require external dependencies.

Code Examples

Current timestamp (seconds)

import "time"
time.Now().Unix()

Returns the current Unix timestamp in seconds as an int64. The idiomatic Go way.

Current timestamp (milliseconds)

import "time"
time.Now().UnixMilli()

Available since Go 1.17. Returns milliseconds since epoch as int64.

Current timestamp (nanoseconds)

import "time"
time.Now().UnixNano()

Returns nanoseconds since epoch. Useful for high-resolution benchmarking. Overflows int64 around year 2262.

Convert timestamp back to time.Time

import "time"
t := time.Unix(timestamp, 0).UTC()

The second argument is nanoseconds offset. Pass 0 for whole-second precision. Call .UTC() to normalize the timezone.

Format timestamp as string

import "time"
t := time.Unix(timestamp, 0).UTC()
formatted := t.Format(time.RFC3339)

Go uses reference-time formatting (2006-01-02T15:04:05Z07:00). time.RFC3339 produces ISO 8601 output.

Note

Go's time.Now().Unix() is seconds since epoch, consistent with C and Python. The UnixMilli() and UnixMicro() helpers were added in Go 1.17 — before that, developers multiplied by 1000 manually. All time.Time values in Go are timezone-aware.

Related Languages

Unix timestamp in Rust →Unix timestamp in Python →Unix timestamp in Java →

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