Ambitious X-ray observatories have enabled a rapid expansion in our knowledge of the X-ray time domain. With state-of-the-art facilities like Chandra, XMM Newton, and Swift performing surveys for over a decade (and counting), variability catalogues are becoming increasingly rich. Meanwhile, high time-resolution from the likes of NuSTAR and NICER (and RXTE before them) continue to uncover the richness of individual systems. These efforts have revealed a likely pulsar-ULX connection and possible magnetar oscillations, and have enabled reverberation mapping of AGN – to name only a few results. The talk reviewed recent highlights from the X-ray time domain, and described briefly what we hope to achieve with up-coming and proposed X-ray missions including HEX-P, Athena, XARM, eROSITA, STROBE-X, eXTP and TAP.