time

How to format the current time as a string?

The builtin module time contains a convenient one-stop function:

import time

print(time.asctime())

An alternative is to retrieve the time and date as a datetime object that can be formated to custom strings:

print(time.strftime('%a %d.%m.', time.localtime()))

How to use a datetime object?

The date and datetime objects have attributes for time components:

import datetime

date = datetime.date(2025, 9, 30)
print(date.year, date.month, date.day)

You can use explicit attribute names when creating date objects:

timestamp = datetime.datetime(year=2025, month=9, day=30, hour=7, minute=25, second=0)
print(timestamp.minute)

How to let a program wait for a while?

The time.sleep() function gives back control to the Python interpreter. If you are running multiple threads they may do something.

import time

time.sleep(3)

Note that if you are in an asynchronous function, you will have to use asyncio.sleep().

import asyncio

async def wait():
    await asyncio.sleep(3)

asyncio.run(wait())

.. seealso::

   -  `Documentation for the time module <https://docs.python.org/3/library/time.html>`__
   -  `Documentation for the datetime module <https://docs.python.org/3/library/datetime.html>`__