Text(Today(), DateTimeFormat.ShortDate) reports differently on mobile from desktop

[JosWhite]

My app uses Text(Today(), DateTimeFormat.ShortDate) to send the text value of today's date to a SharePoint list. When I do this from a web browser on my desktop it reports today as 4/1/2020. When I use the iOS PowerApps app it reports today as April 1, 2020. I really don't care which it reports but why is it not consistent? That is really what I need here.

[MrNappa · Accepted solution]

In my experience, this behaviour may be caused by localization of your device/OS/browser. I'm not entirely certain how the end result is determined, though. Even if you specify an explicit language code, it may be overridden or fall back to default. 

I think if you use a custom format that only uses numbers (like 'dd mmmm YYYY'), you can get a consistent behaviour.

Be wary when using the text options though. For example, in some of my apps I use 'Text(date, "[$-nl-NL]dddd dd mmmm yyyy")' to display a date; but I observed that if my browser language is set to English, it doesn't display the date in Dutch. And if I view it on my device, and the device language is set to English, it also displays the English text.

[JosWhite]

This works. It feels a bit more like hard-coding the result, and shouldn't be necessary, but works. Thanks!