The default behavior of date picker is: Close after click on date. But when is using time, it's not the best approach. There are some advises described by Scott Ryan to improve it. 1. Place the time selection at the top of the window and hope that this drives users to select time first. 2. Add an apply button only when the time selection is displayed. That way they can select date and time in any order and select apply or some button to apply both selections. This was the strategy that was adopted by richfaces and seemed to do well. They also had a flag to determine whether the apply button was displayed or not for those that had more trained users.