# Filebeat and Nanosecond Timestamps

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/filebeat-and-nanosecond-timestamps/389204>\
**Category:** Beats\
**Tags:** filebeat\
**Created:** [August 5, 2026, 6:51am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/filebeat-and-nanosecond-timestamps/389204 "2026-08-05T06:51:07Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![dawiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/71e660/32.png) [@dawiro](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/dawiro)\
**Post date:** [August 5, 2026, 6:51am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/filebeat-and-nanosecond-timestamps/389204/1 "2026-08-05T06:51:08Z")

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Hi,  
Can I get some clarification around how filebeat handles an inbound timestamp field of nanosecond precision when it uses that field to set @timestamp? Also, can filebeat generate nanosecond timestamps?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![covj12](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/covj12/32/147474_2.png) [@covj12](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/covj12)\
**Post date:** [August 31, 2026, 3:55am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/filebeat-and-nanosecond-timestamps/389204/2 "2026-08-31T03:55:37Z")

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Filebeat is Go based and uses the `time` package, so it can handle nanosecond precision internally.

You can either use the `timestamp` processor to parse an inbound field with a nanosecond layout, or set the global `timestamp.precision: nanosecond` option to raise the precision ceiling for all timestamps Filebeat handles.

> **[Timestamp | Beats](https://www.elastic.co/docs/reference/beats/filebeat/processor-timestamp)**
>
> The timestamp processor parses a timestamp from a field. By default the timestamp processor writes the parsed result to the @timestamp field. You can...

> **[timestamp.precision - Configure general settings | Beats](https://www.elastic.co/docs/reference/beats/filebeat/configuration-general-options#_timestamp_precision)**
>
> Configure the precision of all timestamps. By default it is set to millisecond. Available options: millisecond, microsecond, nanosecond | You can specify settings in the filebeat.yml config file to control the general behavior of Filebeat. This...

But that's just Filebeat's processing capability Elasticsearch's `@timestamp` still defaults to `date` (ms) mapping, so unless you explicitly override it to `date_nanos`, it gets rounded on indexing.