How to insert current date time in vscode?

As of Jan 2018 (release 1.20) you can use these new snippet environment variables.

Your example above would look like this:

"File Header": {
    "prefix": "header",
    "description": "Output a file header with the file name and date",
    "body": [
        "title: $TM_FILENAME",
        "date: $CURRENT_YEAR-$CURRENT_MONTH-$CURRENT_DATE $CURRENT_HOUR:$CURRENT_MINUTE:$CURRENT_SECOND",
    ]
}

Type head, press ctrl+space and it should show snippet menu.

I have created an extension for you that allows to insert formatted date and/or time string - Insert Date String.

Installation

Open Command Palette by pressing F1, type ext install + press Enter and then look for Insert Date String extension.

Usage

To insert current date and/or time at the cursor position you can:

Press ⇧+⌘+I (OS X) or Ctrl+Shift+I (Windows and Linux), or open Command Palette by pressing F1 and type Insert DateTime then press Enter.

Configuration

By default you don't have to set anything. But if you want to change the datetime format, look for insertDateString.format option in user settings.

// Date format to be used.
"insertDateString.format": "YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss",

You can specify any valid ISO 8601 format. There are some examples in readme.

Snippet

Unfortunately you can't use anything more than tab stops or variables in snippets so you'll have to enter the title and date/time manually.

You can define snippets for specific languages. To open a snippet file for editing, open User Snippets under File > Preferences (Code > Preferences on Mac OS X) and select the language for which the snippets should appear.

Following example is for Plain Text files.

After opening a snippet file for Plain Text, add following definition:

{
     "File header": {
        "prefix": "header",
        "body": [
            "title: ${title:Enter title}",
            "date: ${date:Insert datetime string (⇧⌘I or Ctrl+Shift+I)}"
        ]
    }
}

Now you can open a new plaintext file, enter header and press Tab. Enter your title and use Insert DateTime command to insert current date and/or time.

Idea for a more customizable solution

One could write an extension for inserting such headers. This way some sort of templates with several predefined variables (e.g. date, filename, configurable username/email, etc.) might be used.

Hope this helps!!

if you don't want create a snippet, there is a simple way, using keybindings.

open keybindings.json (Preferences: Open Keyboard Shortcuts (JSON)), and add fellow code to your keybindings.json

[
    {
        "key": "cmd+k t",
        "command": "editor.action.insertSnippet",
        "when": "editorTextFocus",
        "args": {
            "snippet": "$CURRENT_YEAR-$CURRENT_MONTH-$CURRENT_DATE $CURRENT_HOUR:$CURRENT_MINUTE:$CURRENT_SECOND"
        }
    }
]

that's all.

now you can use cmd+k t to insert current data time while typing.