The native Date object is clumsy. For complex apps, professionals use libraries like date-fns or Luxon.
Native Formatting
javascript
const now = new Date();
// The "Internationalization" API is the modern native way
const readable = new Intl.DateTimeFormat('en-US', {
dateStyle: 'full',
timeStyle: 'short'
}).format(now);
console.log(readable);
// "Tuesday, January 6, 2026 at 2:30 PM"Pro Tip
Always store dates in your database as UTC ISO Strings (2024-01-01T12:00:00Z). Convert them to the user's local time only when displaying them on screen.