Changing Post Read-time to Update Date

Currently, blog posts have an estimated reading time (read-time) displayed next to them. Since this isn’t particularly useful information, I wanted to change it to show when the post was last updated. While older resources suggest using plugins to calculate update times, with the Minimal-Mistakes template released in 2021, update times can be used directly without additional plugins. This makes sense, as you can see the update time along with tags and categories in the post’s footer, confirming that it’s being calculated internally.

Now we only need to modify a part of _config.yml. In the defaults section that determines the basic post format, change read_time to false and add the show_date section:

# Defaults
defaults:
  # _posts
  - values:
      read_time: false
      show_date: true

Even with these changes, the post section will only show the date without indicating whether it’s the creation date or update date. To fix this, we need to modify _includes/page__meta.html. Add the following line (without spaces between the curly braces) between the icon output section and the time output section:

{ { site.data.ui-text[site.locale].date_label | default: "Updated:" }}