How to find the created date of a repository project on GitHub?

Question

How can I find the created date of a project on GitHub?

Basically, I have to find the first commit to see the created date, however, some projects have 500 commits, which wastes a lot of time trying to get to the first commit page.

Is there a quicker way to get the created date?

Does this answer your question? [Is there a easy way on GitHub.com to find a repositories creation date?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/23157557/is-there-a-easy-way-on-github-com-to-find-a-repositories-creation-date) — Oliver Sieweke, Apr 04 '20 at 11:29

score 293 · Accepted Answer · edited Oct 08 '21 at 13:04

293

How can I find the created date of a project on GitHub?

Use the Repos GitHub API to retrieve this information

Syntax: https://api.github.com/repos/{:owner}/{:repository}
Example: https://api.github.com/repos/libgit2/libgit2sharp

The JSON payload will expose a created_at member with the UTC date the repository was created.

Considering the LibGit2Sharp repository above, one can see that it's been created on Feb, 2nd 2011 at 16:44:49 UTC.

Note: The created_at won't necessarily reflect the date of the first commit. It's the date the repository has been created on GitHub. For instance, the xunit/resharper-xunit project was recently moved from codeplex to GitHub. The created_at date is 2014-05-01T11:17:56Z, but the most of the commits date back much more farther than that.

edited Oct 08 '21 at 13:04

TylerH

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answered May 12 '14 at 15:12

nulltoken

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This is for a public repo, right? Any idea about private? – kraftydevil Jul 28 '16 at 18:19
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This worked on a live repo and also on a recently dead one too. – Joe Jan 23 '18 at 04:45
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@kraftydevil Check this for private repositories. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/23611669/how-to-see-a-created-date-of-a-repository-project-on-github/#49097550 – vicke4 Mar 04 '18 at 16:29
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Handy cURL one-liner `curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/KhronosGroup/WebGL | grep 'created_at' | cut -d: -f2-`. Prints `"2016-03-11T02:02:33Z",` :) – legends2k Jun 11 '18 at 23:49
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@legends or someone else, suggestions for converting to human readable timestamps? – jasonleonhard Sep 12 '19 at 21:29
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@jasonleonhard Looks like [it is in ISO 8601 time format](https://stackoverflow.com/q/29281935/183120); the `Z` means it's in UTC0 time zone and `T` is just a separator. Perhaps you can do the conversion yourself? – legends2k Sep 13 '19 at 07:51
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@legends2k Thanks for the response. Just curious if there is some cli tool to convert it to human readable or perhaps an api flag. – jasonleonhard Sep 13 '19 at 18:00

score 52 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 18 '18 at 05:22

52

If you are not interested in the exact creation date, and just would like to know how old a repo roughly is. You can go to Insights, then Contributors. For example, first commit for react was pushed on May 26 2013.

answered Oct 18 '18 at 05:22

zachguo

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I found that the section *code frequency* displays the same information. – Pound Hash Nov 24 '21 at 21:38

score 41 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 31 '17 at 13:47

41

@nulltoken's answer is very useful. To make it even more convenient, I decided to create a chrome extension for displaying a date of creation of a repository.

Highlights

Beautiful calendar icon in the summary bar on a repository page
Customizable date format followed Moment format pattern
Best performance by storing all fetched URIs in the Storage

Date of creation of a repository is displaying on the summary bar:

Date format is customizable by clicking at the extension icon:

This's working really well for me. I hope it's useful for you as well.

answered Jan 31 '17 at 13:47

lvarayut

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@LVarayut That's a much better design than the one achieved by my UserJS script (see my answer). – Alessandro Cosentino Apr 09 '17 at 16:44
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Github changed the ui since then, so it looks a little different now - it's on the right side below the readme and license links – Predrag Stojadinović Sep 19 '20 at 12:28
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It's not even their ^ now... removed completely? – Jacob Philpott May 23 '21 at 22:59

vicke4 · Answer 4 · 2018-03-17T05:39:14.220

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I've written a bookmarklet for this, It may come in handy. You can even know the details of private or private - organization repositories with a simple workaround.

GitHub repository size, creation date bookmarklet | Source Code

edited Mar 17 '18 at 05:39

answered Mar 04 '18 at 16:24

vicke4

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score 23 · Answer 5 · answered Nov 02 '17 at 14:57

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Syntax:

curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/{:owner}/{:repository} | jq '.created_at'

Example:

curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/NabiKAZ/video2gif | jq '.created_at'

Result:

"2017-04-22T22:58:47Z"

answered Nov 02 '17 at 14:57

Nabi K.A.Z.

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This worked on a live repo, but not on a recently dead one. @nulltoken's answer worked on both. Not a criticism - just info. – Joe Jan 23 '18 at 04:49
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For private repos, just pass in your github username with the curl command `-u {:username}`. You'll be prompted for your password. – peter Apr 22 '19 at 18:40
If you do not have `jq` command then use `grep '.created_at'` instead. – Péter Szilvási Jul 05 '23 at 08:55
@PéterSzilvási yes, but that return `"created_at": "2017-04-22T22:58:47Z",` no only date. – Nabi K.A.Z. Jul 07 '23 at 04:20
You can extract the date using the `cut` command: `echo '"created_at": "2017-04-22T22:58:47Z",' | cut -d "\"" -f 4`. At this point, I would prefer the `jq` command over `grep` plus `cut` command, since it is more readable. – Péter Szilvási Jul 09 '23 at 05:50

rocky · Answer 6 · 2017-06-06T20:51:48.027

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You can also use Github's new GraphQL API:

query { 
  repository(owner: "graphql", name: "graphql-js") {
    name
    createdAt
  }
}

edited Jun 06 '17 at 20:51

answered Dec 29 '16 at 18:45

rocky

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score 5 · Answer 7 · edited Oct 08 '21 at 13:06

5

Here's the answer without external plugins:

Click on your Profile (top right) and select Settings
In your Settings page, Click the Security log option in the Sidebar.
You should able to see all your repositories on the right
Hover on the date displayed to show the full date and time in a tooltip.

edited Oct 08 '21 at 13:06

TylerH

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answered Mar 07 '19 at 04:53

Dexter

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This is only helpful if you were the one that created the github repo. – RayLoveless Jun 15 '20 at 21:44
I tried this. The security log just says "recent events" and has a search filter I can use to search through events. – majorgear Jan 31 '22 at 15:31
It does not show the repositories on the right anymore. Furthermore it does not seem to have old data. – toni Jul 20 '23 at 21:45

score 2 · Answer 8 · answered Dec 25 '16 at 17:54

2

I created a user script that shows the creation date directly on the GitHub page of the repo: https://openuserjs.org/scripts/cosenal/GitHub_Repo_Dates

answered Dec 25 '16 at 17:54

Alessandro Cosentino

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score 1 · Answer 9 · answered May 25 '22 at 01:56

I've written a bash function for this.

# get github repo created time
ghage(){
  gh_url=${1:?usage: ghage https://github.com/owner/repo}
  owner_and_repo="$(echo "${gh_url}" | cut -d "/" -f4-5)"
  created_time=$(curl -s "https://api.github.com/repos/${owner_and_repo}" | jq -r '.created_at')
  echo "${created_time}"
}

Example:

$ ▶ ghage https://github.com/torvalds/linux
2011-09-04T22:48:12Z

Credit to nulltoken for the API info.

score 0 · Answer 10 · answered Jun 08 '23 at 14:01

In case you want a C# version, you can run a unit test I wrote:

https://github.com/nilnul/nilnul.fs.git.TEST/blob/nilnul-pub/svr_/github/client/repo/vw/UnitTest1.cs

As the comment therein goes, you need to set your token in Windows Credential Manager, and also you need to create a dir named your username in the designated place. (For a pub repo, we shall not push your personal info.)

score -1 · Answer 11 · answered May 11 '22 at 16:02

Just look for the most likely files that would be created when the repo is initially setup such as gitignore or README.md. Then check their history. Normally these files will not have a lot of commits and you can easily check the commit history on those to find the oldest commit.

How to find the created date of a repository project on GitHub?

11 Answers11

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