How to get current date/time in Shopify Flow?

[Pedro_Carrera]

Hi guys -

I’m trying to create a Date object using new Date() in Shopify Flow, but it seems to return an empty or invalid date (like 1970…).
In Shopify Functions, I was able to get the current time using localTime inside the shop query. But I couldn’t find anything similar in Flow queries.

Does anyone know how to get the current date/time in Shopify Flow? Any workaround or best practice?

[teamdijon]

If your flow does not have too much delay built inside, you can leverage the {{ scheduledAt }} object, this should be a starting point

[PaulNewton]

The send-http-request action now returns responses.
So use it to hit a time api then try other ways as possible fallbacks.

Flow: Improved Send HTTP request action enables secure connections and returns data to the workflow

Shopify Flow has an improved Send HTTP request action that supports a broader range of integrations with external services by securely storing secrets and returning data to subsequent workflow steps. The action can be securely configured with secrets, such as access tokens or passwords, that are encrypted and obfuscated in Flow. After sending an HTTP request, the full response is returned to the workflow and can be parsed using a Run code action with a JSON.parse method to define a schema so tha…

For giggles try making an empty liquid template with {{ “now” | date }} as an endpoint, it can cache/stale though.

[teamdijon]

Going for even more giggles you could do:

• An alternate template index.time.json containing the data you need (markup, JSON …)
• Use the {{ scheduledAt }} object to generate an unique ID (i.e. chaining | md5 filter)
• Use the send-http-request to crawl the endpoint as follow store.com/?view=time&page=uniqueId
• The view parameter gives you the custom data you need, the page parameter breaks caching
• You now have all the fresh time data you need !

[daniele.b]

the {{ scheduledAt }} object is given only if the flow is scheduled.
If it’s a triggered flow, there’s no other way to get date/time than send a HTTP request.

Why is not possible to have a date value internal to Flow?

[Yuri_K]

Just to add another option to the list. The Flow Companion app has a dedicated Get current datetime action that returns the current UTC time in ISO 8601 format (e.g. 2026-04-21T12:00:00Z), no configuration required.

You can drop it anywhere in a workflow and pipe {{ getCurrentDatetime.currentDatetime }} into subsequent steps.