That's already there ??

Neither tapping nor long tapping work for me ? I'm on Android, so maybe it's a difference between the iOS and Android versions? Also, my main use case is tapping on the relative dates for commits rather than discussion posts, any idea if that tooltip works for commit dates too on iOS?

Yes, this menu/tooltip is on every relative date label (including commits). It seems like this functionality is just not there on Android?, maybe you should create a dedicated feature request for that (feel free to use my screenshot).

UTC and accuracy to seconds would be best by far for absolute dates. There's no localization issue with UTC dates, and we might as well do it correctly.

Thank you.

The real issue is to always see absolute dates without having to focus on anything. Being "friendly", i. e. colloquial, is exactly the wrong approach for something like this. If I send someone an email, and they later ask me when I sent it because they can't find it, I don't say "yesterday" or "last week"; I actually give them the date and time of the message translated into their timezone if I know it or otherwise UTC or appropriate canonical timezone.

I have a bookmarklet based on your code - it replaces the parent element instead and maintains the link to the committer.

javascript: 
(
function
 (
)
 {

  const
 rts
 =
 document
.
querySelectorAll
(
"relative-time"
)
;

  rts
.
forEach
(
(
rt
)
 =>
 {

    const
 parentElement
 =
 rt
.
parentElement
;

    if
 (
parentElement
)
 {

      const
 a
 =
 parentElement
.
querySelectorAll
(
"a"
)
;

      if
 (
a
[
1
]
)
 {

        const
 href
 =
 a
[
1
]
;

        parentElement
.
innerHTML
 =
 ""
;

        href
.
style
.
marginRight
 =
 "5px"
;

        parentElement
.
append
(
href
,
 rt
.
title
)
;

      }

    }

  }
)
;

}
)
(
)
;

Before

After

So much better, especially when setting it to 24 hour time.

All too many sites insist on using this "friendly" time. The problem is that speaking casually is not the same as reading something that may be out of date, and precision sometimes is necessary (particularly on this kind of site).

? ? See also: https://github . com/MasterInQuestion/talk/discussions/9
? ? I mean a dedicated user filter via "trusted-replace-node-text" .

? ? So sad that using a content filter to fix broken sites has become a frequent...

? ? ----

? ? It appears "trusted-replace-node-text" in current release does not yet support referring the node's attributes in substitution pattern.
? ? So perhaps it has to fallback using "replace" . (which means Firefox only)

? ? Of course convincing the uBO developers to extend "trusted-replace-node-text" 's functionality may be a valid option... (potentially via "${datetime}" alike?)
? ? .
? ? Eventually a more generic filter type ("+!js( ... )"?) that allows arbitrary JavaScript execution would be needed.

? ? uBlock Origin static filter ( "My filters" ):
[[

	github.com
$
doc,frame
,
xhr,replace=
/<relative-time\s.*?(?<![\w\-])datetime\s*?=\s*?(?:"([^"]*)"|'([^']*)').*?>.*?<\/relative-time\s*?>/<span datetime class="no-wrap">\$1\$2<\/span>/gsi

	github.com
##
span[datetime]:upward( .css-truncate ):style( overflow: visible !important; )

	github.com
##
span[datetime]:upward(1):style( width: auto !important; )


! Somewhat quirky (to dynamic page loading):

	github.com
##
+js
(
 trusted-replace-node-text
,
 span
,
 /^\s*?(\d{4})-(\d{2})-(\d{2})T(\d{2}):(\d{2}):(\d{2})(?:Z|([+\-])(\d{2}):(\d{2}))\s*?$/i
,
 "$1$2$3_$4$5$6$7$8$9" 
)
!	github.com##+js( trusted-replace-node-text, div[role="gridcell"] > span[datetime], /(\d{4})-(\d{2})-(\d{2})T(\d{2}):(\d{2}):(\d{2})(?:Z|([+\-])(\d{2}):(\d{2}))/i, "$1$2$3_$4$5$6$7$8$9" )

!	^ No support yet for selectors.

!	Primarily intended to address space limitation of the file list.

]]

? ? This replaces all such "<relative-time>" to "<span>" [1] with the "datetime" attribute as content.
[1] So to avoid the JavaScript updating "<relative-time>".
? ? .
? ? I deliberately dropped attempt to parse the "<span>" type "relative-time" in "github.com/search" etc. :
? ? Which I think is broken and shall be eventually fixed by GitHub.
? ? [ See also: [ https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/70778 ], occurs too. ]
? ? .
? ? Repository deep links don't exhibit the pattern "<relative-time>" before JavaScript rendering: so the early replace wouldn't work.

? ? The RegEx parser is a shortcut that's not perfectly compliant (though strived to be) with standard XML/HTML implementation. [2]
? ? But adequate enough for the case.
[ [2]
? ? E.g. nested "<relative-time>" won't be properly parsed. (somewhat like the parsing of HTML "<p>")
? ? And the parsing of ">" for the end of opening tag may fail fringe cases: literal ">" are valid as attribute value quoted. ]

? ? The "s" flag of RegEx requires Firefox 78+. [ https://caniuse.com/mdn-javascript_builtins_regexp_dotall ]
? ? Used mostly for performance optimization.
? ? Unsure if current uBO already demands higher version, but dropping which shall cause no noticeable difference.
? ? .
? ? Same for the lookbehind [ https://caniuse.com/?search=lookbehind ].
? ? Which is probably unnecessary... though not entirely.

? ? For RegEx help:
? ? |*| https://regex101.com/?regex=%3Crelative-time%5Cs.*?(?%3C!%5B%5Cw%5C-%5D)datetime%5Cs*?=%5Cs*?(?:%22(%5B^%22%5D*)%22|%27(%5B^%27%5D*)%27).*?>.*?%3C%5C/relative-time%5Cs*?>&subst=%3Cspan%20datetime%20class=%22no-wrap%22>%241%242%3C%5C/span>&flags=gsi&flavor=javascript
? ? |*| https://regex101.com/?regex=(%5Cd%7B4%7D)-(%5Cd%7B2%7D)-(%5Cd%7B2%7D)T(%5Cd%7B2%7D):(%5Cd%7B2%7D):(%5Cd%7B2%7D)(?:Z|(%5B%2B%5C-%5D)(%5Cd%7B2%7D):(%5Cd%7B2%7D))&subst=%241%242%243_%244%245%246%247%248%249&flags=gi&flavor=javascript
? ? .
? ? <& Strikeout>The abnormal escape for "$" is caused by [ https://old.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/comments/17d17es?sort=old ] alike.</&>
? ? It appears to be JavaScript RegEx's quirkiness... [ https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/String/replace#specifying_a_string_as_the_replacement ]

? ? I could further improve the custom filter into perfection (seamless indistinguishable from GitHub native):
? ? If some uBlock Origin deficiencies could be addressed:
? ? |1| https://github.com/MasterInQuestion/talk/discussions/14
? ? |2| https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/5972#discussioncomment-7770150

? ? Note:
? ? Some information here and linked may be outdated.
? ? And I do not yet have the time to review & update.

I really appreciate the work you're doing on this, but it needs to be fixed on the server side. People who want to look at Github from mobile devices are out of luck, since mobile browsers don't support (at very best) a full range of addons. I simply don't understand the insistence on using relative or "friendly" times for this -- could someone from Github please jump in and explain this design decision?

Not to mention useless if one wants to take a screenshot, both in terms of not being able to see all of the timestamps and because relative dates are inherently useless for something whose lifetime extends beyond the moment.