Find when a LinkedIn post went live. To the second.

How a LinkedIn post date extractor works

Every LinkedIn post has an ID: the 19-digit number after activity: or -activity- in its link. That number is not random. In November 2021, developer Ollie Boyd published his finding that if you write the ID in binary and keep the first 41 bits, you get the moment the post was created, as a Unix timestamp in milliseconds. He worked it out by trial and error, building on similar work on TikTok IDs. LinkedIn has never documented it, but every post date extractor, this one included, relies on the same rule.

A real example: the ID 7163147469877407744 decodes to 13 February 2024, 12:30:41 UTC. The tool does that arithmetic for you, then converts the result to your local time.

What the date tells you, and what it does not

• It is the creation time. Editing a post later does not change its ID, so the date is when it first went live, not when it was last edited.

• It is exact. LinkedIn's "2mo" is a rounded age that drifts as time passes. The ID gives the date and time.

• Comments carry their own ID. Paste a comment link and you get the comment's time, not the post's. Handy, as long as you know which one you copied.

• It needs an ID. Profile and company page links have no post ID, so there is nothing to decode.

Why people look up a LinkedIn post date

• Is it still current? A hiring post, a product announcement or a "we're raising" update reads very differently at two weeks old than at two years.

• Research and fact-checking. Journalists and researchers use the timestamp to place a post in a timeline, which is why the method came out of open-source investigation circles.

• Timing. Decode a few posts from creators you admire and you start to see when they publish. Compare that with our best time to post windows.

• Your own reporting. Pair each post's exact time with its numbers in the LinkedIn engagement rate calculator to see which slots work for you.

Private by design

Decoding is plain arithmetic, so it happens on your device. We never open the post, never see who wrote it, and nothing you paste leaves your browser. That is also why it is free and unlimited: there is no server work to pay for. Checking a link that someone shared with you? The LinkedIn post inspector shows what any page's link card will look like.

From one timestamp to a posting rhythm

One date answers one question. A rhythm needs every post you have published, when it went out, and how it did. VoiceMoat keeps that for you: Analytics reads your posts on Twitter or LinkedIn and shows how each one performed, and audenAI, the brain inside VoiceMoat, drafts the next ones in your voice from your own content. Less decoding, more posting.