Need Date/Time in Mojave Finder, not "Yesterday" or "Today" in Column view

There are no Terminal commands to configure Finder interfaces. Apple continues to revise the Finder user interface, and functionality with each major operating system upgrade — proving that past is not prologue.

You can use Finder's Preview mode in Column view. Here is the Preview options panel open selecting creation and modification dates which are displayed in the right-hand window location:

and in List view, you can click and grab existing headings to better positions (e.g. filename, created, modified, etc.). Control-click/Right-click on any heading name and a list of available headings appear on a secondary menu. Here is my list view setting:

If you select a document in Column View and then select Show View Options from the View menubar options

you will get a pop up menu where you can select Content Created and Content Created, this will list the actual date of the documents creation or modification, not just today, see screenshots below. depending what kind of files you work on the list of Preview Options may differ, but if you want to see more than Created: today at 14:30, activate the Content Created field

and you will get todays date written out.

Also screenshots by default should have the date and time in their title.

Another possibility is using an Automator Quick Action that is enabled in System Preferences : Extensions : Finder:

Where this particular Quick Action is a custom solution saved from Automator with that name string. Here is the Automator screenshot behind this QA:

and the pertinent output when one uses it on a file in list or column mode showing Today for creation and modified dates:

And the pertinent AppleScript source found in the Quick Action:

set display_format to " -t '%b %e, %Y at %l:%M %p' -f 'Name:       %N%nCreated:    %SB%nModified:   %Sm%n'"
	
set date_stats to (do shell script "stat " & display_format & space & (POSIX path of input as text)'s quoted form)
set date_tilde to (do shell script "sed -E \"s|(Name:[[:space:]]+)($HOME)(.*)$|\\1~\\3|g\" <<<" & date_stats's quoted form)
display dialog date_tilde with title "Created and Modified Dates"



Quick Actions can also be accessed from their secondary menu (control/right-click) sub-menu, or from the Finder Preview panel's actions. They can also be assigned a non-conflicting keyboard shortcut too.

The Finder does not grant control over the date formatting in the Finder Preview panel. For those files that display Today in their date, you need to perform an additional Finder Get Info on that file to show the full creation/modification date.

Both list and column view will show Today in the creation/modification dates.

It might be possible to cook up an Automator Quick Action that can present the full dates for you in a dialog by right-clicking on the filename in either of these Finder views. It would also be available to you in the Finder Preview panel's actions too.

In Finder column view, whether on Mojave 10.14.6 or Catalina 10.15.4; with Show Preview enabled; I do not see the content created, and content modified selection options in the Show Preview Options panel for a wide variety of different document and image types.

Yes I think I said in my initial post that the Preview Options available will differ for different file types.

The original poster has not revealed what file types they are using so it is difficult to give a targeted response.

As you can see from my screenshots the Content Created and Content Modified is available for some file

types.

We can only wait for a response from the original poster to see what file types they are using and see if the Show

Preview Options will allow him/ her to select Content Created and Content Modified.

I tried this on Word .docx, PDF, .pages, .txt, .jpg, .mp4, .zsh, and .py files without any Content Created or Modified options appearing. One camera RAW (.arw) from a Sony A7R iv provided only content created. Overall, this appears to limited in practical scope.

Consider using a dedicated document management system, or some other means of storing and managing your files?