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Webmail Date Format Hardcoded to US (mm/dd/yyyy) Regardless of User Locale – Critical Localisation Gap
Problem reported by Craig Edmonds - Today at 10:53 AM
Resolved
C
We have are in the process of migrating approximately 1,600+ mailboxes from Rackspace to a self-hosted SmarterMail cluster (EU-based, GDPR-aligned infrastructure) and are about 100 accounts and discovered something quite unsettling.

During deployment we discovered that:

Webmail displays dates exclusively in US format (mm/dd/yyyy), even when the user’s locale is set to a European region.

This behaviour appears to be hardcoded and not configurable.

Why This Is a Problem

  1. Locale settings exist but are not respected
    SmarterMail allows user locale configuration. However, date formatting in Webmail does not reflect those settings.
  2. This causes real user confusion
    In Europe, the standard format is dd/mm/yyyy.
    For example:
    • 03/04/2026 → Is that March 4th or April 3rd?
    In enterprise environments this creates unnecessary ambiguity.
  3. This impacts international deployments
    SmarterMail is marketed globally.
    A hardcoded US date format in the UI significantly reduces the perceived localisation maturity of the product.
  4. This is not a niche feature
    Proper date localisation is standard behaviour in modern software applications.
    Browsers, SaaS platforms, CRMs, and even basic admin panels respect locale or regional formatting.

What Is Being Requested

At minimum:
  • Date format should respect the user’s locale setting.
  • OR allow administrators to define a system-wide date format.
  • OR provide a simple dropdown format selection in Webmail settings.
This should not require custom CSS, hacks, or feature workarounds.

Why This Matters

We are deploying SmarterMail across a large European user base.
The inability to display dates in dd/mm/yyyy format is generating avoidable friction during migration.

For a modern enterprise mail platform, this is a fundamental localisation expectation.

Call to Action

If you operate SmarterMail outside the United States, or deploy it in international environments:

Please upvote this feature request.

Proper locale-aware date formatting should be standard functionality in Webmail.
This is ours build 9546

Displays as it is supposed to.
Zach Sylvester Replied
Today at 1:23 PM
Employee Post Marked As Resolution
Hello Craig,

Thanks for the post. Date Format is connected to the language the user is set to. To display dates in D/M/Y format, simply set the user's language to English (United Kingdom). You can do this in bulk using the user defaults.

Hope this helps.

Kind Regards,
Zach Sylvester Software Developer SmarterTools Inc. www.smartertools.com
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