MacBook Pro running Sonoma reverting to wrong date & time

Same problem as others

Auto was May 2023. (Today, 24 January 2024).

Manually entered correct date.

Reselected Auto immediately went back to incorrect date of May 2023

However, as mentioned above this fixed it for me.

Deliberately input manual incorrect date of 2nd January 2024

Reselected Auto, defaulted to correct time and date. (24 January 2024)

Does the same happen if you try it while running in Safe Mode?

Same issue on a 2018 Air, running macOS 14.1. Deleted the timed plist, restarted, and that seems to have fixed it. Installing 14.3 now.

u have to type everything

sudo rm /var/db/timed/com.apple.timed.plist

I had the same issue. Just started today. Initially, I noticed my time was wrong. It said it was 2:56 AM when it was 11:45 AM. The date was correct though. So I opened my Date/Time settings and clicked the "Set" button to see if that would fix it but it didn't. I noticed I had a pending software update (OS 14.1.2) so I decided to install that to see if it would fix it.

After the update was installed my date was now changed back to back to November 15th, 2020. I tried turning the automatic date/time setting off and on, and clicking the Set button but it didn't change it.

I tried the suggested solution twice and it didn't seem to fix it. When I would reboot the date/time would still be wrong and I'd have to set it manually. After the second time, I turned off the automatic setting and manually set the date/time to the correct time. I then turned the automatic setting back on, and the date/time stayed the same. Not sure if there is a delay after the change before it fixes or what, but seems to be working now.

I tested it by manually setting the date to the wrong date, then turning on the automatic setting and it changed it back to the correct date/time now. I did another reboot, and the date/time are still correct.

First, I'd update the OS to 14.2.1, as I believe there was a fix for this in 14.2.

Second, have you tried the solution proposed above, of deleting the timed.plist file?

sudo rm /var/db/timed/com.apple.timed.plist

A bit late to this thread but I’m also experiencing this issue and have been since late November. I have tried different time servers, I’ve tried all terminal commands recommended, I’ve been through a reboot process with Apple. All terminal commands are temporary. If I shut the lid to my Mac I must perform the command again upon opening. Just to add to this, I have a MacBook Pro 13" with Touch Bar - 2.3GHz, 512GB - Silver (2018), and I have noticed that on every occasion where the clock has jumped back, upon opening my Mac, it hasn’t locked properly, so I can see my full unlocked screen, rather than the locked user screen, but the Touch Bar is asking me to use Touch ID to unlock before I’m able to do anything, and the dock is often not visible until this is done.

No, it's a problem with com.apple.timed.plist You can change servers as much as you want and it will still show completely wrong date and time (and wrong I mean by months or even years).

I'm seeing the same issue on a 2020 Intel MacBook Pro having recently upgraded to Sonoma 14.1.1.

Mine is reverting to 10th November 2023 - the date I upgraded.

No attempts to manually set the time or timeserver last beyond a reboot.

Setting the date and time to "automatically" resets the date and time back instantly to the wrong date/time.

me too. It's the 26th December at 4:35 and if I walk away for a while and come back the computer thinks it's 6th December at 5:15. Weird. Have fixed it for now using this command:

sudo sntp -SS time.apple.com

then turn off automatic update. But as someone said the time will drift eventually but hopefully this goes away by then.

I just had this same issue! The date and time was reading as January 2 around 3:30pm (it was 7:40pm). When I played around with the date and time in settings by unchecking and rechecking the “automatic” button, it set itself to October 31, 2021 at 1:19pm. I assume because of this, I lost all connection to the internet and couldn’t even use my phone as a hotspot. A screenshot I took was additionally named with the October 2021 date and time. When I managed to manually reset the date and time to be correct, I was able to use the internet again. Out of curiosity, I re-checked the “automatic” button and it remained accurate. What a strange glitch!

This sounds like a problem with the clock server for your region. Do you know anyone with a Mac in your area? If so, see if they have the same issue.

I have same problem on Macbook Air late 2020 intel, and on Macbook Pro M1 ... and on old mini ..

I thing is a bug.