Learn how to stop your iPhone, iPad, or Mac from automatically changing time zones on its own and take back control of date and time into your own hands.
If you’d prefer to have control over the time settings on your Apple device, you can do this easily and prevent your iPhone from changing time zones on you.
Just keep in mind that adjusting the settings to control the time manually means that you’ll need to remember time changes when you’re traveling across the country or internationally. And you may see an alert to update your time when daylight saving time rolls around.
Manually set the time on your iPhone or iPad
- Open the iOS Settings app and tap General.
- Scroll down to Date & Time.
- Turn off the toggle for Set Automatically. Then, beneath that setting, you can tap to add a certain city for the Time Zone as well as a date and time.
If you can’t follow the above steps
Is the “Set Automatically” toggle grayed out, and you can’t tap it? That’s because of parental restrictions on your device. Simply, turning off the Screen Time passcode should fix the problem. If not, turn off Content & Privacy Restrictions as well.
- Open the Settings app and tap Screen Time.
- Tap Change Screen Time Passcode, followed by Turn Off Screen Time Passcode, and type your Screen Time passcode to disable it.
- Now, force quit and reopen the Settings app, then go to Date and Time settings to disable automatic time zone changes. If it’s still grayed out, restart your iPhone and retry. In case even that doesn’t help, return to iOS Settings > Screen Time > Content & Privacy Restrictions and turn it off.
Turn off time zone settings by location
If you’re a frequent traveler or experiencing random time zone changes on your iPhone, you may want to disable the time zone setting that’s based on your location as well. Of course, you should do this only if you want to have full control in your hands and don’t want your iPhone changing the time automatically.
- Open the Settings app on your iPhone, select Privacy & Security, and tap Location Services.
- Scroll down to the bottom and tap System Services.
- Turn off the toggle for Setting Time Zone.
If you’re on a Mac
The same settings available on iPhone and iPad are also accessible on Mac.
To make your changes, go to System Settings > General > Date & Time. Now, you can turn off “Set time and date automatically” to set the time manually. You can also turn off “Set time zone automatically using your current location” and type another city name in the “Closest city” box to select it.
Then, you can head to Mac’s System Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Service, click the “Details” button next to System Services, and toggle off Settings Time Zone.
While it’s convenient to have your iPhone, iPad, and Mac automatically update the time and time zone you’re in, you may prefer to do it manually or find that you’re having issues displaying the correct time. Hopefully, this tutorial will be useful to you in those situations.
Please let us know if you’ve experienced any issues with the correct time on your device and how you resolved them.
Also, check out: How to display clocks for other time zones in your Mac menu bar