iOS 8 Calendar on iPhone showing GMT times for new events.

Sunrise Calendar works well too.

I believe in order for an app to bypass the problem, it must interface directly with -- that is, explicitly log into -- your calendar service (Google, Exchange etc.). An app like Fantastical (a great app in its own right) won't solve the problem since it's the same iOS calendar on the back end.

TheIssa wrote:

I spent about an hour last night chatting with Apple support. They blame it on the fact that Google uses GMT, which if you follow the link a few posts up you will see a solid explanation of why they do. In fact, I was directed to the same link by Apple. Apple said it's because they use "a more sophisticated way of showing the time" in the calendar now (cough, cough...trying to cover up their mistake), so that's why devices using iOS 8 are experiencing the problem. Um, news flash: it's not more sophisticated if it doesn't work. It worked fine before and nothing with Google has changed. It's an Apple problem, and after working my way up to a supervisor last night I was told their engineers are working on a solution, but don't have a time frame for a fix. So, for now I'm trying Sunrise. So far so good.

Well at least that's an answer: We're not really acknowledging it's our glitch but we're quietly working on it, and have no ETA for when we might have a fix.

Thanks for sharing, Thelssa.

One workaround I found was that I make a new entry repeating. Then after saving, I open the entry again and change it to a single instance. This for some reason preserves my local time zone and I don't need to correct the times for the entry. So in your view this would be a bug - not that all new entries are put in GMT?

Jack,

I made that video on YouTube. The demonstration is syncing through an MS Exchange server, not Google Calendar. None of your discussion is relevant to this bug as manifested through Exchange.

Apple has confirmed this is a BUG. I don't know why you, and others, keep insisting that "no this isn't really a bug at all" when even Apple confirms that it is a bug in iOS and that they are working on a fix for it.

If you have identified a workaround that works in your case that's great. Tell others so that they can use it if It works for them. But don't say effectively "gosh we have all just been missing an settings change here" because that's not the case. Several of us have spent hours with our IT staff working on this, and some of us ARE EMPLOYED as IT staff. There is no easy fix. The iOS code needs to be fixed.

This behavior never happened before iOS 8. It happens to users of multiple different synced services after iOS 8. The same services all still work fine on iOS 7. The common variable is iOS 8.

I sure hope Apple fixes this too, but so far, their attitude towards me and millions of other affected users is "thanks for being an Apple customer and giving us a bunch of your money.....go pound sand."

Yes, the Microsoft Outlook iOS app was released today.... it is based on the Acompli iOS app -- which MS purchased a few months ago. Smart acquisition for Microsoft (kudos!).

So - I have the Outlook iOS up and running on my Iphone6 and iPad Air2 (all iOS 8.1.3) -- with FOUR (4) MS Exchange (Office365) accounts --- and everything is working fine on each device and across each device. No GMT "bug" issues whatsoever. And, no issues with my Mac O/S or Windows 7 computer clients (using Outlook and Apple Mail, plus Web Mail).

I ditched Apple iOS calendar app weeks ago... and now only use Calendars 5 (Readdle) or Micosoft Outlook for iOS for my calendar app.

If you are only an MS Exchange or Office365 user --- use should be happy (enough) with these two solutions --- until Apple gets it's act together and resolves the GMT Bug (yes - it's a BUG.... let's all stop wasting time debating this issue!).

Cheers

Hello,

same problem... After having spent hours trying different settings or called Apple helpdesk where I got stupid people on the line pretending I was the only one to have this problem I finally understood ( - by the way the support is really useless as their only "solution" - that wouldn't have worked - was to completelly re-initialise my phone!).

Problem : Whatever the device used (iphone, Ipad, ...) if you are using IOS8xx with a sync account on Google or Exchange, you'll have the problem as soon as the calendar entry was enterred on the device side (not in Google) and when it is synchronized. It's well explained here in this video : http://youtu.be/cgP1zyi_iV8

If you search the web for "IOS8 GMT bugs" you'll find thousands of people in many countries having this problem. What is also frustrating (reading the forums) is that a lot of people that have contacted Apple's help line have been told that it was a Google problem and not an Apple problem... so it is Google that would have to provide a fix !!!??

Google sync was working with IOS7, it is working with a Samsung or Windows device, it is NOT working since the IOS8 update and Apple pretends that the problem is not on their side !!! It's really a SHAME... !!!!

-------------

update : Just installed IOS 8.1.3 and................ NOT FIXED !!!!!!!

I'm disgusted....

JG - ditto, did 1 hour of testing today across iphone, ipad, laptops, etc.

Net result -- no change whatsoever to the GMT Bug.... now 100+ days and counting.

P-word effort SLOW....

Media coverage of the GMT Bug is spreading worldwide and visibility is picking up... Apple unlikely to respond until PR is super NEGATIVE.

But, it's been a good week for the "voice of the customer" -- Intuit caved on TurboTax feature/function changes & charges, Marriott caved on blocking WiFi signals, and Verizon caved on allowing opt-out on "Super-cookies". Maybe Apple will wake up -- after rolling in it's $160 billion cash pile -- and throw a few thousand dollars in resources at the GMT bug!

Here is the Test Used Today:

Equipment: iPad Air2 (iOS v8.1.3), iPhone6 (iOS v8.1.3), Laptops (both Win7), MacMini late-2009 (O/S 10.10.2)

Calendar S/W: iPhone/iPad -- either Apple's iOS Calendar and Calendar5 (Readdle)

Settings: iOS devices - All timezone stuff turned OFF (Settings/General/Date & Time/Set Automatically=OFF; TimeZone set to Portland, Oregon)

Email: 4 Emails accounts; 3 on Office365 (cloud) and 1 on MS Exchange (also cloud); no Google, iCloud, Yahoo, other Email services

First, I created a calendar entry on iPad Air2 using Calendar5 app (so I started without using Apple's calendar!)

• Event Created: 2/1/14 6:00-7:00pm local time (I am PST - Pacific time; 8 hours behind GMT)
• Calendar entry shows as correct on Calendar5 and Apple Calendar app -- event is listed in LOCAL time on both (so far, so good)
• However, on iPhone6 (after sync) now shows event at 2:00-3:00am on GMT time (with GMT displayed on iPhone6 screen); any "edits" on iPhone6 now would bet against GMT time (the bug has hit !)

Second, I made edits to the event on iPad Air2 -- using Calendar5 App (e.g., changed event TITLE and moved to 6:30-7:30pm Local time)

• iPad Air2 shows 6:30-7:30pm local time (no GMT yet) -- on both Calendar5 and iOS Apple calendar
• iPhone6 now shows 2:30-3:30am GMT iphone6 shows 2:30am GMT ... expected behavior

Third, I edit the event on the iPad AIr2 using Apple calendar app (e.g., changed TITLE and moved time to 7:00-8:00pm local time)

• iPad Air2 Apple Calendar and Calendar5 now show event at 7:00-8:00pm local time
• iPhone6 now shows event 3:00-4:00am and GMT icon on display... expected behavior.

Forth, I edit the event on the iPhone6 using Apple Calendar app (e.g., changed TITLE and moved event time to 2:00-3:00am, but left event in GMT TimeZone -- I did not change back to my PST timezone)

• iPhone6 shows GMT and 2:00-3:00am... expected behavior (given the way the bug works...)
• But, now the iPad Air2 Apple Calendar shows event time as GMT 2:00-3:00am and GMT icon/time shown on display... the "bug" has now hit this device
• Calendar5 is FINE... shows 6:00-7:00pm local time (so this calendar App never gets screwed by the iOS GMT bug)

Fifth, I edit the event on iPad Air2 in Calendar5 App…. To see if this edit/change fixes GMT on the iPad and/or iPhone6 (e.g., changed TITLE and moved time to 5:00pm local time – translates to 1:00-2:00am GMT)

• iPad Air2 Apple calendar is unchanged... shows 1:00-2:00am GMT; same with iPhone6 Apple calendar
• Therefore, editing in Calendar5 does not fix the bug... not surprised (just means Calendar5 isn't using iOS "tags" like Apple's calendar)

Sixth, I edit event and "force change" (override) the iPad Air2 Apple Calendar back to PST local time -- moved from 1:00-2:00am GMT to 5:00-6:00pm local time

• iPad Air2 Apple Calendar now shows no GMT -- only 5:00-6:00pm Local time for calendar entry
• iPhone6 stays at 1:00-2:00 GMT

Finally, I edit event and "force change" (override) the iPhone6 Apple Calendar back to PST local time -- moved from 1:00-2:00am GMT to 5:00-6:00pm local time

• This fixes the iPhone6 (now displaying event from 5:00-6:00pm local time)....
• But -- the iPad Air2 gets the GMT bug -- it is now showing the event as 1:00-2:00am GMT and any edits on the iPad Air2 going forward are in GMT timezone.

Reminds me of the "Whac-A-Mole" game.... except far less fun!

<Edited by Host>

Ok folks.... it looks like perhaps this is going to be fixed with the release of iOS 8.2:

http://bgr.com/2015/02/02/apple-ios-8-2-beta-5-released/

Beta 5 was seeded to developers today and the release notes indicate:

"Fixed in beta 5 3rd party calendar sync does not work in this beta"

I sure hope Apple doesn't delete this post due to discussion betas etc. I got this information from one of many articles published publicly today.

Don't let this lull you into a false sense of security. Keep up the pressure on Apple. There's no guarantee they got this fix RIGHT....but at least they are trying.

If there is anyone out there that is running the 8.2 Beta and can confirm whether this fix works, that would be just swell 🙂 If I can figure out how to install the beta version I will report back on this.

@JG in SB I am using two calendars on my iPhone the first is Outlook 365 which I use for work and was provided by my employer, the second is Google which is on my Google account and is for personal use (I rarely put items on the iCloudg calendar which came with the iPhone). I am on iOS 8.1.3. Google is the default calendar in my iPhone 6 Plus settings.

I did not, and do not now, encounter any problem with my Outlook 365 calendar.

I had encountered the GMT issue with events created on my Google calendar reagrdless of the event being created on the iPhone or desktop. First time I created an event after the iOS 8.2 Beta claim of fixing the issue was today, and the problem had disappeared for me.

I think that it is unfair towards Apple to claim that it is not their doing. I don't know if it is or not but it is coincidental with the release of iOS 8.2 Beta. As you pointed out yesterday the release notes say that the issue was fixed.

Claiming that Apple did not do it implies that the fix must be on the client side, namely individual iPhones and iPads. But it is quite possible that the issue was buried on some servers and that it indeed was fixed by Apple. Assume for a moment that the client devices, iPhonea, iPads and iPods communicate with an Apple server which then in turn communicates with the Exchange or Google server and that the code on these server was changed by Apple. There is no evidence that Google did anything, nor is there evidence that Apple did or did not do anything to fix the issue. I doubt we will ever know but we do not know enough to reach a conclusion that it was Google who fixed the issue and that Apple has done nothing. I think they should be given the benefit of doubt.

OK. I'll revise my assessment to say that a preponderance of the evidence indicates that what we are observing today, with the GMT issue disappearing from Google synced calendars exclusively, is the result of a fix implemented by Google, rather than anything done by Apple.

I never claimed that what happened today occurred on the client side. I claimed, quite specifically, that I believe Google has blocked the time zone of its servers from being transmitted to clients that sync with those servers. This GMT Bug manifests when the iOS code picks up the time zone setting from the server and then transposes your appointments to that time zone. This has been confirmed by AppRiver, a HUGE provider of hosted MS Exchange services.

I hypothesize that if the buggy code can't acquire the server's time zone setting, it can't subsequently transpose your appointments. I believe Google has blocked that setting data from being transmitted to synced clients, which is why we are hearing from multiple users of Google Calendar today that their issue is "fixed without them doing anything" and we are hearing from no Exchange users....other than you....that this issue is fixed.

So, while I cannot be 100% certain, I believe it is totally fair to say, until other evidence presents itself, that Google did something that fixed this for Google users, and that Apple did not do anything yet.

"OK then, let's assume Google fixed it, would that not mean that Apple was right from the very beginning claiming that it was a Google problem and not theirs?"

No. Absolutely not. Because, as has been confirmed over and over again, this BUG affects plenty of people who don't use Google for anything. The one single unifying factor common to everyone who experiences, or has experienced this bug, is iOS 8.

All Google did was a smart update on its side that prevents the bug from manifesting on its users' devices. The bug is still right there in the iOS code, but Google blocked the essential data it needs if it is to show up.

MS Exchange has not blocked that data, and the bug is very much alive and well for users who sync with Exchange.

So Apple's claim that this problem was due to Google was, and continues to be utter BS. Their software is just as buggy as before, and Google simply has deprived the bug of the data it needs to transpose the times of users' appointments to GMT. Also, at this point, there are multiple reports of the BUG being fixed in the 8.2 update. OK?? Why would Apple "fix" something that was not a problem with their software??? I know you read the 8.2 beta 5 release notes yesterday...because you tried to argue about them. Now there are other reports out confirming this may be fixed in 8.2.

I don't have time to get into an argument about the obvious today. If you can't understand what is happening, then you are never going to understand it. I believe what has happened here is obvious to just about everyone with any programming experience. I am not even a programmer, but I have enough experience to quickly identify what likely happened here.

Why do you enjoy arguing simply for the point of argument itself???

Your GMT "barnacle" analogy is excellent!! Here's a re-statement of my THEORY about what causes the GMT bug using your fantastic analogy:

The "barnacle" goes out on all appointments created on any iOS device running iOS 8 (maybe even earlier iOS versions). The "barnacle" attempts to acquire the time zone setting of the server you are syncing through. If that server publishes its clock time zone setting, the "barnacle" acquires it.

When the appointment with the "barnacle" attached to it syncs down to any other iOS 8 device, iOS 8 checks in with the barnacle. If iOS 8 sees that the "barnacle" has acquired the server's time zone setting, then it transposes the appointment to which the "barnacle" is attached into that time zone and displays the time zone (i.e. "(GMT)") on the user's calendar.

I hypothesize (can't confirm as absolute fact, but I can deduct this based on what I have learned from AppRiver etc.) that Google did something to its servers today to BLOCK the publishing of the server time clock time zone setting to clients (your iPhone etc.). The "barnacle" is still attached to any appointment created on any device running iOS 8.x, but when the appointment with the "barnacle" hits the Google server now, it doesn't find a time zone setting to acquire. It's "starved" of the data. So when the appointment syncs down to other iOS devices from Google, those devices still check in with the "barnacle" but the "barnacle" doesn't have any data: it just reports "NA" or "blank" or something. So iOS 8 on the receiving device leaves the appointment at the time the user intended to set it up for.

MS Exchange Servers remain unchanged (GMT alive and well) on this very same day that the Google servers changed to deprive the "barnacle" of the time zone setting. That is why, on this very same day, Google users report that the bug is gone, and MS Exchange users all report that they still see it. Nothing changed in iOS. There's also the substantial fact that Apple does not secretly push software updates out to iOS devices and does not install said updates without user's consent or acknowledgement (at least not that I or anyone else is aware of).

There are a few early reports back from people running iOS 8.2 Beta 5 that this bug is fixed as of that release. I believe (again, just what I can deduct based on what others have reported) that Apple has either: 1) removed the "barnacle-generating" code; or 2) changed the iOS 8 code so that data acquired by the "barnacle" is simply ignored by the receiving iOS device, and events are no longer transposed based on the data acquired by the "barnacle". I HYPOTHESIZE that previous versions of iOS either didn't generate the "barnacle" or they ignored it.

That's my THEORY 🙂 OK Backgammoner...... I can't 100% confirm this but it certainly would be a plausible explanation for what we have all seen, and it easily explains why the bug is gone from Google accounts yet remains on Exchange accounts on the very same day. It would also explain why users of some services (Google Exchange) that publish server clock time zone settings to clients experienced the bug, while users of other services (Yahoo!, Hotmail) that don't publish this information never experienced it.

And let me ask you this Backgammoner, since you are a programmer: although there may be other potential reasons/causes etc., the scenario I have described above is also totally plausible is it not?

When iOS 8.2 is released to the public some day, maybe we will be able to confirm this 100%. In the meantime, based on information you can find doing Google searches, I'm pretty optimistic that this bug is fixed in iOS 8.2 and that in fact, it is BUG that Apple never planned for or intended to inflict upon us.

@KarnFar and others maybe you can help me work this out. Here’s what I see...

It appears to me that Apple created a feature to display (time/time zone) in each event IF the time zone is different from the time zone of the Calendar app. (Perhaps this was a new feature in iOS 8 and Yosemite, but I can’t remember how things used to work in earlier OS versions.) So, now the logic is as follows...

When the time zone of the Calendar app and the event are the same, no alternate (time/time zone) appears.

When the time zone of the Calendar app and the event are different, (time/time zone) appears to display the event’s original time and time zone.

Along the way, in iOS 8 and Yosemite, new Calendar events sync to the time and time zone of the service and thus displayed (GMT time/GMT) when the Calendar app was not in GMT. It then appears that Google has now changed this to point to the user’s Google Calendar Time zone and instead of the Google base time zone and voila!, here we are… if your Calendar app and Google Calendar are in the same time zone, which they typically are, then (time/time zone) disappears from the events. As @KarnFar points out, there is a nice shortcut for cleaning up a batch of past events that got shifted to GMT.

However, I think there is still a bug - shouldn’t a new event retain the time zone of the Calendar app rather than the service it’s syncing to? In fact, when you change the time zone for an event, the new time zone is saved (as expected) and the logic outlined above still applies. I’m hoping that the 8.2 release fixes this apparent bug so that new events adopt the time zone of the Calendar app (whether the time zone comes from iOS or Mac OS or the Time Zone Override) rather than the calendar service. That seems like a more consistent behavior to me anyway.

Thoughts anyone?

Thanks. I don't have the problem anymore because I too switched off the time zone override. Note I did not say my problem was fixed because this is just a work-around and I have now lost functionality. Pretty poor on Apple's part when you think they have had several opportunities to fix it!

TImezone override must be off. You must delete the calendar entries and re-add them. then they will work correctly. There is no avoiding deleting the calendar entries that are in error.