Relative Date Tooltip

WHAT IT DOES

Relative Date Tooltip detects dates and times in any text you hover over and instantly shows both the relative time (e.g., "2 days ago", "in 3 hours", "yesterday") and the absolute date in your local timezone. The extension recognizes a wide range of date formats including ISO 8601 (2024-01-15T14:30:00Z), Unix timestamps, US and European date formats (MM/DD/YYYY, DD/MM/YYYY), month names (Jan 1, 2024), and relative phrases like "today", "yesterday", "tomorrow", and "now". A clean tooltip appears near your cursor with the relative time highlighted in blue and the absolute date below in a subtle gray. The tooltip updates dynamically as you move your mouse across different dates on the page, making it easy to understand the temporal context of dates while reading.

WHERE IT RUNS

The extension works on every website with text containing dates, including news sites, blogs, documentation pages, social media, and any other page with date references. It runs locally in your browser, parsing and converting dates without sending any data to external servers. The extension supports all major browsers and adapts to both desktop and mobile viewports seamlessly.

HOW TO USE

After installation, simply hover over any date or time mention on a webpage. A tooltip appears showing the relative time (e.g., "2 days ago") and the absolute date in your local timezone (e.g., "Jan 15, 2024, 2:30 PM"). To customize the experience, open the extension panel and toggle "Show relative time" to show or hide the relative time display. Toggle "Show absolute date/time" to show or hide the absolute date. Choose the tooltip position (Above cursor, Below cursor, or Beside cursor). Select your preferred date format (Short, Medium, or Long). For per-site customization, enable or disable the extension on specific websites using the per-site controls.

THE ACTUAL MECHANISM — DATE PATTERN DETECTION WITH MULTI-FORMAT PARSING

The extension uses a comprehensive date detection pipeline. It applies a series of regex patterns to the text content of the element under the cursor, testing for ISO dates, Unix timestamps (10-digit seconds and 13-digit milliseconds), US and European date formats, month names, day-month-year combinations, time-only formats, and relative phrases. When a match is found, the extension parses the matched string using the appropriate parser (e.g., Date constructor for ISO, manual parsing for US/EU formats, special handling for relative phrases). The parsed date is then used to calculate the relative time by comparing it to the current time using the browser's Date object. The difference in milliseconds is converted to seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, and years, and the appropriate relative phrase is generated (e.g., "2 days ago", "in 3 hours"). The absolute date is formatted using the browser's Intl.DateTimeFormat with the user's selected format option. The tooltip is positioned relative to the cursor using getBoundingClientRect() and adjusted to stay within the viewport.

THE PANEL

The settings panel is a lightweight, draggable overlay that appears in the center of your screen. You can reposition it by clicking and dragging the title bar; release it near the screen edge and it will snap into place automatically. To collapse the panel into a compact title bar, click the minimize button, expanding it again with the same control. The panel is fully responsive, adapting to different screen resolutions with a minimum width of 300px and a maximum of 480px. Press the Escape key at any time to dismiss the panel without applying changes. All controls—the enable/disable toggle, relative time toggle, absolute time toggle, position selector, date format selector, and per-site controls—are accessible within a clean, high-contrast interface that respects your system's color scheme.

PLEASE NOTE

This extension requires the free BotGentz companion extension to be installed and active, which provides the underlying DOM access and storage engine. The date detection relies on regex patterns and may not recognize all date formats. The extension uses the browser's built-in timezone handling, so dates are displayed in the user's local timezone. Relative phrases are currently supported in English only. No personal data, browsing history, or date content is ever collected, stored, or transmitted. All settings are saved using the browser's storage API and remain solely on your device. The extension does not inject ads, trackers, or analytics of any kind.