How to use the meeting planner
- Pick the date of the meeting. The date matters, because daylight saving time can change the gap between cities.
- Add up to 10 locations from the list of about 280 world cities. Your time zone is also available, so you do not need to look up your own city.
- Choose which location’s hours to list down the side of the table. This is usually your own location, or the person who is organizing the call.
- Read the table. Each row is one hour of that day, and each column shows the local time in one location.
The cells are colored so you can scan them quickly:
| Color | Local time | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Green | 9:00 to 17:00 | Working hours |
| Amber | 7:00 to 9:00 and 17:00 to 19:00 | Early morning or early evening |
| Grey | 19:00 to 7:00 | Night |
When an hour falls on a different calendar day in one location, the cell shows that date as well, so you can see at once that 18:00 in Los Angeles is already the next morning in Tokyo. Below the table, the result names the best hours: hours when everyone is within working hours, or, if no such hour exists, hours when nobody is at night.
Your locations are remembered in this browser. Share creates a link that carries the whole plan, so the people you invite can open the same table.
Why the date matters
Most time differences are not fixed all year. Europe and North America both use daylight saving time, but they change their clocks on different Sundays. For a few weeks in March, and for about a week around the end of October and the start of November, New York is four hours behind London instead of five. Countries in the southern hemisphere, such as Australia and New Zealand, change in the opposite season, so the gap between Sydney and London can change by two hours over the year. The planner handles this hour by hour, even on the day a clock change happens. For more background, see daylight saving time.
Tips for meetings across many time zones
- Three regions are hard. The Americas, Europe and East Asia rarely share any working hour. Expect someone to join early or late, and rotate who takes the inconvenient slot.
- Watch the date line. A Monday morning call from the Americas falls on Monday evening or Tuesday in Asia and Oceania.
- Use half-hour zones carefully. India (UTC+5:30) and parts of Australia sit on half-hour offsets, so a call on the hour elsewhere starts at half past for them.
To compare just two places, the time difference calculator is quicker. To publish one fixed time that every reader sees in their own zone, use the event time announcer, and for a live overview of many cities, open the world clock.