You can use the following methods to get yesterday’s date in PowerShell:
Method 1: Get Yesterday’s Date
[DateTime]::Today.AddDays(-1)
This particular example returns yesterday’s date with a default time of 12 AM.
Method 2: Get Yesterday’s Date at Specific Time
[DateTime]::Today.AddDays(-1).AddHours(16)
This particular example returns yesterday’s date with a time of 4 PM.
By using AddDays(-1) we are able to subtract one day from today.
Then, by using AddHours(16) we are able to add 16 hours to get a time of 4 PM.
The following examples show how to use each method in practice.
Example 1: Get Yesterday’s Date in PowerShell
This article is being written on 6/18/2024.
We can use the following syntax in PowerShell to get yesterday’s date:
[DateTime]::Today.AddDays(-1)
The following screenshot shows how to use this syntax in practice:
Notice that this returns a date of 6/17/2024 at 12AM, which represents the date for yesterday.
Example 2: Get Yesterday’s Date at Specific Time in PowerShell
We can use the following syntax in PowerShell to get yesterday’s date at exactly 4 PM:
[DateTime]::Today.AddDays(-1).AddHours(16)
The following screenshot shows how to use this syntax in practice:
Notice that this returns a date of 6/17/2024 at 4 PM.
Feel free to change the value in the AddHours() method to instead return yesterday’s date at a different specific time.
Note: You can find the complete documentation for the Get-Date cmdlet in PowerShell here.
Related Tutorials
The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in PowerShell:
PowerShell: How to Compare Dates
PowerShell: How to Sort an Array of Strings by Date
PowerShell: How to Use Get-Date with 24-Hour Format
