diff --git a/app/helpers/application_helper.rb b/app/helpers/application_helper.rb
index 70419eb4bde..a3213581498 100644
--- a/app/helpers/application_helper.rb
+++ b/app/helpers/application_helper.rb
@@ -167,7 +167,7 @@ module ApplicationHelper
     css_classes = short_format ? 'js-short-timeago' : 'js-timeago'
     css_classes << " #{html_class}" unless html_class.blank?
 
-    element = content_tag :time, time.to_s,
+    element = content_tag :time, time.strftime("%b %d, %Y"),
       class: css_classes,
       title: time.to_time.in_time_zone.to_s(:medium),
       datetime: time.to_time.getutc.iso8601,
diff --git a/changelogs/unreleased/format-timeago-date.yml b/changelogs/unreleased/format-timeago-date.yml
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..f331c34abbc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/changelogs/unreleased/format-timeago-date.yml
@@ -0,0 +1,4 @@
+---
+title: Format timeago date to short format
+merge_request:
+author:
diff --git a/spec/features/commits_spec.rb b/spec/features/commits_spec.rb
index 324ede798fe..0e305c52358 100644
--- a/spec/features/commits_spec.rb
+++ b/spec/features/commits_spec.rb
@@ -192,7 +192,7 @@ describe 'Commits' do
       commits = project.repository.commits(branch_name)
 
       commits.each do |commit|
-        expect(page).to have_content("committed #{commit.committed_date}")
+        expect(page).to have_content("committed #{commit.committed_date.strftime("%b %d, %Y")}")
       end
     end
   end
diff --git a/spec/helpers/application_helper_spec.rb b/spec/helpers/application_helper_spec.rb
index 4ffdd530171..5c07ea8a872 100644
--- a/spec/helpers/application_helper_spec.rb
+++ b/spec/helpers/application_helper_spec.rb
@@ -193,8 +193,8 @@ describe ApplicationHelper do
   describe 'time_ago_with_tooltip' do
     def element(*arguments)
       Time.zone = 'UTC'
-      time = Time.zone.parse('2015-07-02 08:23')
-      element = helper.time_ago_with_tooltip(time, *arguments)
+      @time = Time.zone.parse('2015-07-02 08:23')
+      element = helper.time_ago_with_tooltip(@time, *arguments)
 
       Nokogiri::HTML::DocumentFragment.parse(element).first_element_child
     end
@@ -204,7 +204,7 @@ describe ApplicationHelper do
     end
 
     it 'includes the date string' do
-      expect(element.text).to eq '2015-07-02 08:23:00 UTC'
+      expect(element.text).to eq @time.strftime("%b %d, %Y")
     end
 
     it 'has a datetime attribute' do