How to Get Current Time in Swift (Quick 3-Step Guide)

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Using Calendar to get current time in Swift

To get the current time in Swift:

  1. Choose a date.
  2. Grab the hour, minute, and the second using calendar’s time components.
  3. Display the time by grouping the time components.

For example, let’s show what time it is right now in the console:

import Foundation

// 1. Choose a date
let today = Date()

// 2. Pick the date components
let hours   = (Calendar.current.component(.hour, from: today))
let minutes = (Calendar.current.component(.minute, from: today))
let seconds = (Calendar.current.component(.second, from: today))

// 3. Show the time
print("\(hours):\(minutes):\(seconds)")

Output:

11:59:32

A Deeper Dive

Let’s take a closer look at the above Swift code to understand what it does!

This Swift code imports the Foundation framework, which provides fundamental data types, collections, and operating-system services to the Swift programming language.

Then the code does the following:

#1 Create a constant variable named “today” and set it to the current date and time using the Date() initializer.

The Date type represents a specific point in time by the Foundation framework.

#2 Extract the current hour, minute, and second components from the “today” date using the Calendar.current component method.

This method returns the specified component of a given date in the current calendar, which is based on the user’s preferred calendar and region settings.

The extracted components are stored in the “hours”, “minutes”, and “seconds” constants, respectively.

#3 Print the current time in the format “HH:MM:SS“.

The values of the “hours”, “minutes”, and “seconds” constants are interpolated into a string using the string interpolation syntax of Swift. This uses the “()” syntax to evaluate and insert the value of a variable or expression into a string.

Thanks for reading. I hope you find it useful.

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