Calculate the date yesterday in JavaScript

How can I calculate yesterday as a date in JavaScript?

18 Answers

var date = new Date(); date ; //# => Fri Apr 01 2011 11:14:50 GMT+0200 (CEST) date.setDate(date.getDate() - 1); date ; //# => Thu Mar 31 2011 11:14:50 GMT+0200 (CEST) 

[edit sept 2020]: a snippet containing previous answer and added an arrow function

[edit april 2022]: a snippet to extend the Date prototype (without polluting the global namespace)

// a (not very efficient) oneliner let yesterday = new Date(new Date().setDate(new Date().getDate()-1)); console.log(`Yesterday (oneliner)\n${yesterday}`); // a function call yesterday = ( function(){this.setDate(this.getDate()-1); return this} ) .call(new Date); console.log(`Yesterday (function call)\n${yesterday}`); // an iife (immediately invoked function expression) yesterday = function(d){ d.setDate(d.getDate()-1); return d}(new Date); console.log(`Yesterday (iife)\n${yesterday}`); // oneliner using es6 arrow function yesterday = ( d => new Date(d.setDate(d.getDate()-1)) )(new Date); console.log(`Yesterday (es6 arrow iife)\n${yesterday}`); // use a method const getYesterday = (dateOnly = false) => { let d = new Date(); d.setDate(d.getDate() - 1); return dateOnly ? new Date(d.toDateString()) : d; }; console.log(`Yesterday (method)\n${getYesterday()}`); console.log(`Yesterday (method dateOnly=true)\n${getYesterday(true)}`);

.as-console-wrapper { max-height: 100% !important; }

Surprisingly no answer point to the easiest cross browser solution

To find exactly the same time yesterday*:

var yesterday = new Date(Date.now() - 86400000); // that is: 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000 

*: This works well if your use-case doesn't mind potential imprecision with calendar weirdness (like daylight savings), otherwise I'd recommend using

Try this

var d = new Date(); d.setDate(d.getDate() - 1); 

To generalize the question and make other diff calculations use:

var yesterday = new Date((new Date()).valueOf() - 1000*60*60*24); 

this creates a new date object based on the value of "now" as an integer which represents the unix epoch in milliseconds subtracting one day.

Two days ago:

var twoDaysAgo = new Date((new Date()).valueOf() - 1000*60*60*24*2); 

An hour ago:

var oneHourAgo = new Date((new Date()).valueOf() - 1000*60*60); 

I use moment library, it is very flexible and easy to use.

In your case:

let yesterday = moment().subtract(1, 'day').toDate(); 

new Date(new Date().setDate(new Date().getDate()-1)) 

//Create a date object using the current time var now = new Date(); //Subtract one day from it now.setDate(now.getDate()-1); 

This will produce yesterday at 00:00 with minutes precision

var d = new Date(); d.setDate(d.getDate() - 1); d.setTime(d.getTime()-d.getHours()*3600*1000-d.getMinutes()*60*1000); 

var today = new Date(); var yesterday1 = new Date(new Date().setDate(new Date().getDate() - 1)); var yesterday2 = new Date(Date.now() - 86400000); var yesterday3 = new Date(Date.now() - 1000*60*60*24); var yesterday4 = new Date((new Date()).valueOf() - 1000*60*60*24); console.log("Today: "+today); console.log("Yesterday: "+yesterday1); console.log("Yesterday: "+yesterday2); console.log("Yesterday: "+yesterday3); console.log("Yesterday: "+yesterday4);

d.setHours(0,0,0,0); 

will do the trick

Here is a one liner that is used to get yesterdays date in format YYYY-MM-DD in text and handle the timezone offset.

new Date(Date.now() - 1 * 864e5 - new Date(Date.now() - 1 * 864e5).getTimezoneOffset() * 6e4).toISOString().split('T')[0] 

It can obviusly changed to return date, x days back in time. To include time etc.

console.log(Date()) console.log(new Date(Date.now() - 1 * 864e5 - new Date(Date.now() - 1 * 864e5).getTimezoneOffset() * 6e4).toISOString().split('T')[0]); // "2019-11-11" console.log(new Date(Date.now() - 1 * 864e5 - new Date(Date.now() - 1 * 864e5).getTimezoneOffset() * 6e4).toISOString().split('.')[0].replace('T',' ')); // "2019-11-11 11:11:11" // that is: [dates] * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000 - offsetinmin * 60 * 1000 // this is: [dates] * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000 - offsetinmin * 60 * 1000

Give this a try, works for me:

var today = new Date(); var yesterday = new Date(today.setDate(today.getDate() - 1)); ` 

This got me a date object back for yesterday

If you want to both get the date for yesterday and format that date in a human readable format, consider creating a custom DateHelper object that looks something like this :

var DateHelper = { addDays : function(aDate, numberOfDays) { aDate.setDate(aDate.getDate() + numberOfDays); // Add numberOfDays return aDate; // Return the date }, format : function format(date) { return [ ("0" + date.getDate()).slice(-2), // Get day and pad it with zeroes ("0" + (date.getMonth()+1)).slice(-2), // Get month and pad it with zeroes date.getFullYear() // Get full year ].join('/'); // Glue the pieces together } } // With this helper, you can now just use one line of readable code to : // --------------------------------------------------------------------- // 1. Get the current date // 2. Subtract 1 day // 3. Format it // 4. Output it // --------------------------------------------------------------------- document.body.innerHTML = DateHelper.format(DateHelper.addDays(new Date(), -1));

(see also this Fiddle)

You can use momentjs it is very helpful you can achieve a lot of things with this library.

Get yesterday date with current timing moment().subtract(1, 'days').toString()

Get yesterday date with a start of the date moment().subtract(1, 'days').startOf('day').toString()

"Date.now() - 86400000" won't work on the Daylight Saving end day (which has 25 hours that day)

Another option is to use Closure:

var d = new goog.date.Date(); d.add(new goog.date.Interval(0, 0, -1)); 

solve boundary date problem (2020, 01, 01) -> 2019, 12, 31

var now = new Date(); return new Date(now.getMonth() - 1 === 0 ? now.getFullYear() - 1 : now.getFullYear(), now.getDate() - 1 === 0 ? now.getMonth() - 1: now.getMonth(), now.getDate() - 1); 

Fabiano at the number two spot and some others have already shared a similar answer but running this should make things look more obvious.

86400000 = milliseconds in a day

const event = new Date(); console.log(new Date(Date.parse(event) - 86400000)) console.log(event)