How to Change Your Google Calendar Time Zone

To change your time zone in Google Calendar on a Mac or PC, open calendar.google.com, click the gear icon, choose Settings, then General → Time zone → Primary time zone, and pick a city or country. That changes the time zone for all your calendars at once. In the Google Calendar app on iPhone, iPad, or Android, go to Menu → Settings → General and turn off Use device time zone to pick one by hand.

Most time zone problems in Google Calendar come from three separate settings that people mix up: your primary time zone, the time zone of a single calendar, and the time zone of a single event. I build hora Calendar, a Mac app that works with Google Calendar, and it has to get all three right. The steps below follow Google’s own time zone help page, checked on 27 October 2026.

The short answer

• All your calendars (web): gear icon → Settings → General → Time zone → Primary time zone.
• One calendar only: hover over it under My calendars → three dots → Settings and sharing → Time zone.
• One event: open the event → Edit → Time zone, next to the event time.
• Two or three zones side by side: Settings → General → Time zone → Show additional time zones.
• Phone or tablet: Menu → Settings → General → Use device time zone.

How to change your primary time zone in Google Calendar

Your primary time zone decides how every event on your grid is displayed. Change it on the web, in Safari, Chrome, Firefox, or a Dock web app:

1. Open calendar.google.com.
2. Click the gear icon at the top right and choose Settings.
3. On the left, under General, click Time zone.
4. Click Primary time zone.
5. Search for a city or country and select it.

Under the same section you can tick Ask to update my primary time zone to current location. Google Calendar then asks whether to switch when you travel, instead of switching silently or not at all.

How to change the time zone of one calendar

Each calendar you own has its own time zone too. It matters for people who subscribe to that calendar and for new events created in it. To change it:

1. Under My calendars on the left, point to the calendar.
2. Click the three dots, then Settings and sharing.
3. Click Time zone, search for a city or country, and select it.

Google notes one limit: you can only change the time zone of calendars you own. A shared team calendar or a subscribed holiday calendar keeps the owner’s setting.

How to set a time zone for a single event

This is the fix for a flight, a trip, or a call with someone abroad. The event keeps its real-world time, and everyone sees it in their own local time.

1. Create an event and click More options, or open an existing event and click Edit.
2. Next to the event time, click Time zone.
3. Search for a city or country and select it.
4. For a flight, tick Use separate start and end time zones, so it can leave in Warsaw time and land in New York time.
5. Click OK, then Save.

Show two or three time zones at once

If you work with a team in another country, you do not need to keep changing your primary zone. Google Calendar can show up to three zones on the left of the grid:

1. Go to Settings → General → Time zone.
2. Tick Show additional time zones.
3. Pick a Secondary time zone and, if you want, a Tertiary time zone.

For a quick glance without changing the grid, turn on the World clock in the same Settings area and add the cities you care about. It appears in the side panel.

Change the time zone on iPhone, iPad, and Android

The mobile apps have one switch. Open Google Calendar, tap Menu → Settings → General, and look at Use device time zone. With it on, Google Calendar follows your phone and updates as you travel. With it off, you can choose a time zone from the list. Google covers this on its iPhone and iPad help page. Additional time zones and per-calendar time zones are set on the web.

Google Calendar showing the wrong time? Check these

• Your primary time zone is still from a trip. Check Settings → General → Time zone and set it back.
• Your Mac’s clock is in a different zone. Open System Settings → General → Date & Time on your Mac and check the time zone, or turn on Set time zone automatically using your current location. Apple explains it in Set the date and time automatically. If the browser and the Mac disagree with Google Calendar, events can look an hour or more off.
• The event was created in another time zone. Open it and look next to the time. If the organizer set the wrong zone, ask them to fix it, because you cannot change it on an event you do not own.
• Daylight saving time just changed. Google stores events in UTC and converts them to your local time. Google warns that events far in the past or future may display the wrong offset around daylight saving changes.
• A country changed its time zone rules. Google says events created before it knew about a change can end up in the wrong zone. Edit the event and save it again.
• Your setting did not reach another device. Some Google Calendar settings stay on one device. I listed which Google Calendar settings actually sync in a separate post.

Time zones in a native Mac calendar

If you use Google Calendar in a Mac app instead of a browser tab, the app has to handle three clocks: your Mac, your Google account, and each event. That is the case I built hora Calendar for. Version 1.1.8, for example, fixed Google Tasks showing up on the wrong day for people in some time zones.

hora follows your Mac’s time zone. If your Google Calendar primary time zone is different, for example because you forgot to set it back after a trip, hora shows a short warning in its settings that names both zones, so you know why the web looks different. You can add a Secondary timezone in hora’s settings, and it appears next to the hours in Day and Week view, with the offset shown in settings, so you can see a colleague’s working hours. When you create an event, More options lets you choose its time zone by searching for a city, or set separate start and end time zones for a flight. Everything goes straight to Google through the official Calendar API, so the same event shows correctly in Google Calendar on the web and on your phone.

If you also juggle a work calendar in Outlook, here is how to sync Outlook and Google Calendar on Mac, and for reminders that arrive at the right local time, see Google Calendar desktop notifications on Mac. For every other way to get Google Calendar onto your Mac, start with 5 ways to use Google Calendar on a Mac.

The honest limits: hora works only with Google Calendar, not iCloud or Exchange, and needs macOS 15 or later. It costs $2.99 a month, $29.99 a year, or $59.99 once for Lifetime. hora is independent and not affiliated with Google.

If you plan across time zones every week and want Google Calendar to feel like a real Mac app, try hora Calendar free for 14 days.