Show Timestamps In Bash History

Category: Linux

By default, the output from history does not show a timestamp when commands were run in bash.

To enable timestamps in history for the logged in user, update ~./bashrc as follows:

echo 'export HISTTIMEFORMAT="%F %T "' >> ~/.bashrc

In the above:

%F shows Date in the format ‘YYYY-M-D’ (year-month-date)
%T shows Time in the format ‘HH:MM:S’ (hour:minutes:seconds)
There is a space after %T and before " so that there is a space in your bash history between the time the command was executed and the command itself

To enable this change, activate as follows:

source  ~/.bashrc

To enable timestamps for all users, add the HISTTIMEFORMAT variable to /etc/profile