How to use the world clock
- Your own time is at the top. The other clocks show how many hours ahead or behind they are.
- Type a city, country or time zone into Add a city, such as Berlin, Brazil or PST, and pick it from the list. Use × to remove a clock.
- Drag Compare times to see one moment on every clock, in half-hour steps from now. Back to now returns to the live time.
- Tick 12-hour clock if you prefer AM and PM. Your list stays on this device for next time.
Reading the clocks
Each row shows the time, the date there and the short name of the time zone, such as GMT, CET or JST. Clocks where it’s night (before 7 in the morning or after 7 in the evening) are shown slightly quieter, which helps when you want to know whether someone is likely to be awake.
The date matters more than it seems. When it’s Monday evening in New York, it’s already Tuesday morning in Tokyo and Sydney, so a deadline of “Tuesday” can mean different moments to different people.
Time zones that catch people out
- Daylight saving dates differ. The US and Europe change their clocks on different weekends, so for a few weeks a year the gap between New York and London is 4 hours instead of 5.
- The southern hemisphere goes the other way. Sydney moves its clocks forward in October, around when Europe moves them back, so the gap between them changes by two hours across the year.
- Some places never change. Most of Arizona, Japan, India and China stay on the same time all year.