The remote work time zone challenge
Remote and distributed teams routinely work across 3, 5, or even 10 different time zones. Finding a meeting time that works for everyone — that falls within business hours for each person — requires knowing not just what time it currently is in each location, but what specific local times correspond to each other across the globe. Mental arithmetic with UTC offsets is slow and error-prone. The converter does it instantly.
How to use the converter
Add up to 6 cities using the city selector dropdowns. The current time in each city updates in real time. To find a specific meeting time, set the date and time in the "Pick a time to convert" field — all city times update to show what that moment corresponds to in each location. Cities currently in business hours (9am–6pm local time) are highlighted in green, making it visually immediate which cities are available.
The business hours overlap finder
The overlap panel automatically analyses all 24 hours and finds the window when all selected cities are simultaneously within business hours. If no overlap exists, it tells you so clearly — a common situation when trying to include both US West Coast and Southeast Asia in the same meeting, where there is no overlap at all during standard business hours.
Daylight saving time handling
The converter uses the IANA timezone database via the browser's Intl API, which correctly handles daylight saving time automatically for all locations. When a city is in DST, its UTC offset adjusts automatically. This is important because DST transitions differ by country — the US switches DST in March and November, the UK in March and October, parts of Australia in October and April, and many countries (Japan, China, India) do not observe DST at all.
UTC offsets vs named time zones
The city-based approach is more reliable than UTC offset arithmetic because UTC offsets change when clocks change for DST. "London" is always correct because the database knows when London shifts between GMT (UTC+0) and BST (UTC+1). "UTC+1" is ambiguous — it might be correct for London in summer but wrong in winter.
Common time zone combinations and their challenges
New York and London have a 5-hour difference (4 hours during summer when DST transitions do not align perfectly). New York to Tokyo is typically 13–14 hours, making synchronous collaboration very difficult — most NY/Tokyo teams work asynchronously and reserve meetings for very early NY morning or very late Tokyo evening. The US has 4 time zones (Pacific, Mountain, Central, Eastern), meaning even domestic US meetings can span 3 hours.