Display actual dates in Mail instead of relative terms

How to show actual dates in Apple Mail on your Mac

If you are using a MacBook Pro running macOS Sequoia 15.7, you can adjust how dates appear in Apple Mail.

Here’s how:

1. Open the Mail app.
2. Click View in the menu bar at the top of your screen.
3. Select Show Date and Time.

This displays the time alongside the date in your message list.

One thing to keep in mind: Apple Mail may still show “Yesterday” instead of the actual calendar date.

Unfortunately, macOS 15.7 does not offer a built-in setting to replace relative dates like “Yesterday” with a date such as “Oct 31, 2026.”

If you need to see the exact date, open the email and check its full date and time in the message details.

For more information, see Apple’s official guide:

Apple Mail User Guide – macOS Sequoia 15

In short, enabling View > Show Date and Time is the quickest way to make dates in Apple Mail more informative, although it will not completely eliminate relative date labels.

> Unfortunately, macOS 15.7 does not offer a built-in setting to replace relative dates like “Yesterday” with a date such as “Oct 31, 2026.”

This is such a bad UX

Thanks. Appreciate the reply.

It was actually the dreadful "yesterday" that I was trying to get rid of, but hey ho.

You are welcome

🦉-53