Epoch Time: Why Computers Count Seconds Since 1970 and How to Convert It

You are reading a log file and see a timestamp: 1711382400. What time is that? You encounter a JWT token with an exp field of 1743004800. When does it expire? You are debugging an API response with a created_at field of 1679616000. When was it created? Epoch time (Unix time) is everywhere in computing, and being able to read it or convert it quickly is a genuine productivity skill. What epoch time is Epoch time is the number of seconds that have elapsed since January 1, 1970 at 00:00:00 UTC. This moment is called the Unix epoch, chosen arbitrarily when the Unix operating system was being developed. The current epoch time is approximately 1,774,000,000 (as of early 2026). It increments by 1 every second. It does not account for leap seconds (UTC inserts them, but Unix time pretends they do not exist, which creates the occasional 1-second discrepancy). Why it exists Human-readable dates are terrible for computation. "March 25, 2026 3:00 PM EDT" contains timezone information, locale-speci