Interesting…I thought that disclaimer was always there on the documentation for both TODAY() and NOW(). I haven’t seen any change with the actual behavior, though. My task system still refreshes every day at around midnight thanks to a formula with NOW() in it, but the refreshing of that (and TODAY()) has never been constant. From the last tests I did a few weeks ago, it’s about every 7-15 minutes. I didn’t bother to check exactly how frequently, so that’s a pretty wide ballpark guess, but it matches your experience with the manual refresh.

My gut says that you’re just discovering the delay that I found in my last test, which I’m fine with, and which (as far as I know) will still happen in the background. However, maybe something did change after all. I’ll report back if anything goes awry with my task system refresh tonight.

I can confirm that the disclaimer about when NOW and TODAY update has been there for a while.

The behavior you describe is also consistent with what I have historical seen.

Thanks for the insights, @Justin_Barrett and @kuovonne! I guess I never noticed that disclaimer until a few days ago.

Okay, so it seems like the information they’ve provided in the disclaimer is incorrect — it doesn’t really update when the base loads, but it updates on its own internal time schedule — somewhere between 7 and 15 minutes.

Okay, that’s great to know. I’ll report it to them to update the disclaimer.

I’ve seen NOW update in less than 7 minutes when I’ve been developing a base. I’m not sure the exact interval of time, though. The update might have happened sooner due to me making other schema changes though.

My nightly update automation ran as planned, so I don’t think anything has changed.

Fantastic! Thanks so much for this excellent information, @kuovonne and @Justin_Barrett!!

One of my clients emailed me a few nights ago in a panic because his formulas weren’t updating properly in his base, and that’s when I stumbled down this rabbit hole. It’s good to have a better understanding of how this really behaves.

Thanks so much to both of you guys for the clarification!!

I’ll also reach out to Airtable Support to ask them to please update the information on that page to perhaps indicate that these fields just update on their own interval that we can’t really control… but that it happens relatively frequently.

Thanks for the information; i was about to add a post, but i notices this one. This being said, i fell very disappointed that a company that claims working with AI and all sort is unable to get a regular update. this is just incredible and very annoying ; i need to put hell of fields and formulas to avoid automations in the wrong order and the whole process is just taking way too much time.

Did AT take any action after your exchanges ?

Many thanks in advance

I know this has been a while now, but I figured out a way to make sure Airtable runs at the right time, ALL THE TIME. Unless they introduce something again to prevent or fix this. Check out my video. I am not sure if everyone here will get my response, but if the video is not there in the future, here's the solution:

1. Create these two fields: checkbox and last modified date, ensuring that the date and time are seen.
2. Go to automation and create an automation that matches a condition. This first condition will be, if the checkbox is without a tick (blank), then the action is to UPDATE that said field with a TICK.
3. Duplicate the automation and simply do the reverse. If the field has a TICK, the action should UPDATE it by removing the tick. Essentially make sure it's blank.
4. Turn on these automations and go back to your table.
5. Trigger it so that it starts.
   The automation will indefinitely loop and the last modified date will update every 3 to 5 seconds. This will stop us from waiting for Airtable's 5 to 15 minute updates.
6. Now anything that you create that is time sensitive, use the last modified time.

Thanks a lot, very clever indeed !