Recently, I converted to using ISO-8601 formatted dates as much as possible, e.g. 2020-06-12. As a meme, I hope this catches on. Dates written this way are internationally recognizable, no confusion over mm/dd/yy or dd/mm/yy. They are sortable. And, when used consistently, they are easy to search; no worries about case sensitivity, or Jun/June spellings. Don’t take my word for it, though. Randall Munroe agrees. So does GitLab.
Here's how to create a keyboard shortcut to insert the current date formatted as ISO-8601.
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Launch Automator, and create a new Service.
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This particular service receives no input.
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Drag in Run AppleScript to the service.
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The script I used to insert a date is:
on run {input, parameters}
tell application "System Events"
set _Date to (current date)
set yyymmdd to (year of _Date as text) & "-" & ¬
text -2 thru -1 of ("00" & ((month of _Date) as integer)) & "-" & ¬
text -2 thru -1 of ("00" & ((day of _Date) as integer))
keystroke yyymmdd
end tell
end run
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Save the service and remember the name.
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Open System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts and map the service to a useful keyboard shortcut. I use
Control+Option+Command+d, because it doesn't overlap with any of my existing app shortcuts. -
If the shortcut doesn't trigger in some apps, open System Preferences > Securuty & Privacy > Accessibility and grant access to each app you want to allow to use the shortcut.