Ino DateTime Simple

Every serious batch workflow eventually needs a timestamp: to name output files so renders don't overwrite each other, to log when a run happened, to make each execution's artifacts unique. Ino DateTime Simple is the smallest tool in the Ino Nodes pack for that job - it spits out the current UTC time as a string and nothing else. No keys, no network, no model files. One wire in, one string out.

What you get

Three inputs, all dead simple:

• iso_format - true (default) gives you a full ISO string like 2026-08-16T14:30:05.123456+00:00; false gives the friendlier 2026-08-16 14:30:05.
• input_timezone - a dropdown that currently only offers UTC. Don't read anything into that; the node is UTC-only by design, which is honestly the right call for timestamps you'll sort or compare.
• seed - the quirky one. It's an integer with a "randomize" control, which is this pack's way of forcing the node to re-evaluate every execution. If you leave the seed fixed, ComfyUI may cache the node and hand you yesterday's timestamp; giving it the randomize treatment makes each run grab a fresh time.

The single output, datetime, is a plain STRING - wire it straight into a filename builder, a save node's prefix, a text logger, or the Ino String Concat node if you want to glue it to something else. For file naming the non-ISO format is usually the practical pick, since colons aren't welcome in filenames (the ISO variant has them and a + that some tools misbehave with).

Why bother

You can get timestamps from other packs, but the value here is that it's in the same family as the rest of Ino Nodes' file helpers, which means it composes cleanly: timestamp into a folder path for Ino Save Images, or into a filename that Ino Get Last File can pick up later. It's also genuinely useful as a "when did this run" marker in the pack's logging nodes, because everything downstream speaks STRING.

Honestly, this is a 30-second node with a 30-second explanation. If you're building automated pipelines in the Ino ecosystem it earns its place; if you just need a one-off timestamp, the built-in %time% tokens in ComfyUI's save nodes may already cover you. The reason to prefer this one is when a timestamp has to travel through the graph as data rather than just decorate a filename at the save step.

Installing it

It comes with the full Ino Nodes pack from nobandegani - install that once and this node appears. Easiest: ComfyUI Manager, search "ComfyUI Ino Nodes", install, restart. Or by hand:

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/nobandegani/ComfyUI-InoNodes.git
cd comfyui_ino_nodes
pip install -r requirements.txt

Then restart ComfyUI. Two heads-ups that apply to the whole pack: it's built on the newer V3 node schema (README wants ComfyUI v0.18.1+), so an outdated ComfyUI shows zero nodes; and pip install -r requirements.txt matters because every node imports inopyutils, the author's helper library.

Common issues

The one real trap is the seed. If your timestamp seems frozen, it's the caching behavior - hit randomize on the seed so the node re-runs. And remember it's always UTC: if you display it and it "looks wrong," that's timezone math, not a bug. Search "Ino DateTime Simple" in the node menu to find it.