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

Time Zone Override has exactly the same effect as changing the time zone of the iOS device. It just allows the Calendar app to be set to a different time zone than the rest of the device. For example, when I turn on Time Zone Override and set it to EST, while my iPhone is in CST and Google Calendar is in PST, I still see the PST time in each calendar event (or the CST time for events set to CST). When I change the Time Zone Override to PST, the PST times disappear in PST events. When I turn Time Zone Override off, Calendar switches to CST (same as the iPhone’s overall time zone), the PST times re-appear and the CST times disappear.

Apparently what Google did was to change their calendar service so that iOS Calendar points to the time zone setting in the user’s Google Calendar rather than the reference GMT time for the entire service.

As I mentioned in my previous post, when I create an event, it syncs then switches to the Google Calendar time and time zone. However, when I change the time zone for this event, the new time zone is saved (as expected.) 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 the Time Zone Override) rather than the calendar service. That seems like a more consistent behavior to me anyway. Maybe someone who has the 8.2 beta can give that a try.

Whew… hope this is clear!

Events that were scheduled while the GMT bug was in effect can be ‘fixed’ by editing them and changing them back to the desired time zone and adjusting the time accordingly. As far as I can tell, this must be done for each event individually. (By the way, this fix works before or after updating to iOS 8.2.)

This issue is resolved by restore. Backup your data then do a factory restore in iTunes.

hey i found out how to fix it, you need to go to calander preferences on your mac and then go to advanced and turn off time zone support. Please give me credit. I spent over 4 hours trying to fix it.

I also followed the strategy of logging in to iCloud and changing the timezone setting. It seems to have worked on an iPhone 5c, iOS8

i have same problem...

now, i'm using Tempo calendar app until there's iOS update with a fix...

since Tempo doesn't have GMT issues, it must be Apple calendar app that has a bug...

Neither of these options will work as I can confirm the problem exists in iOS 8 on both brand new and old devices, not just those that upgraded to 8. Two brand new iPhone 6's that were set up as new phones, both having the same issue with time zones!

This is 100% a provlem with iOS 8/8.1. How am I so sure?

1) The same calendar items show correctly on my old, 7.1 iPad (same icloud account, same Exchange account)

2) There is no way the Exchange server is somewhere in the GMT zone.....that is just sad for the so-called genius bar folks to come up with that.

3) This has occured on an older iPad Air I upgraded as well as on a grand new iPad Air2 that came factory installed with 8.1

I am more than a little disappointed with Apple right now. It is one thing to release OS with zillions of bugs.....the incessant finger-pointing at users and other third-party companies is making them look worse than makers of other OS IMO. I have almost zero confidence the issues will ever get fixed, and it is clear that their upgrade process is broken, so they mostly tell everyone to "lose data" by wiping and re-installing all apps fresh. That is no solution for those of us who are heavily invested in apps and back up to iTunes religiously to preserve data. SMH....😟

JG, as you suspected when I set up the sync to Google Calendar on my iphone 4 running iOS 7, it worked fine and did not exhibit the GMT bug. The same test appointment had the GMT bug on both my iOS 8 devices. Hopefully Apple will get this fixed quickly. Hope this helps.

I think you folks are beginning to home in on this. It feels like an iOS 8 bug that has been triggered by a change on the Google server side. I first noticed this problem today, with an appointment I added yesterday. That appointment looked like it went in correctly, but now that my iPhone running iOS 8.1.1 has synced with the Google calendar (which probably happened a few seconds after I entered it, but didn't look back), it's got the GMT problem. And a new appointment I added today also has the problem, but only after waiting a few seconds, for it to sync with Google and redraw. I updated to 8.1.1 quite awhile (at least a week) ago, and don't think the timing correlates. Interestingly, I just noticed that flipping to "all-day" and back appears to have eliminated the GMT reference in that single appointment.

What I still can't figure out is that, at least in my case, when I create an event in Outlook on my desktop computer (or in the native Yosemite Calendar on my MacBook), and that event syncs down to my iDevices, they are not displaying, or transposing to GMT.

So it seems like there are two (2) variables at work here:

1. The originating iOS device is putting some sort of data into appointments that are created on that device that causes the server time zone setting data to populate into the appointment when it syncs through; and,
2. The server time zone setting is then populating into the appointment and being read and displayed by receiver iOS devices when they pull it down from the server.

It appears that the originator iOS device on which the appointment is created is adding a data field...let's call it "server-time-zone"....in the appointment, and then that data field is getting populated when the appointment hits the server. Programs like Outlook, or 3rd party iOS calendar apps, don't care about or look for this server-time-zone field, so even though the data is populated into the field, it isn't visible to the user looking at the appointment let's say in Outlook on their desktop. But iOS devices DO look for that server-time-zone field and then they DO display the data in it. This could explain why an appointment generated on a device that does not run iOS (like my PC) syncs correctly to both my iOS devices (i.e. it doesn't add the server-time-zone field), but then if I modify that very same appointment on my iPhone (changing the start time by 30 minutes let's say), when it syncs back over to my iPad it displays GMT and transposes to GMT.

That's my theory....

@DBD12345: That is a crazy coincidence. Based the posts I have been following here, something started to happen on the Google servers between one to two days ago that caused this to show up on people's devices when it had not previously shown up. Without those users having changed anything on their iOS client devices. And your suggestion that user accounts moving from one Google server to another due to load balancing is a very good theory that could totally explain what these users have observed and reported. If the new Google server their account got migrated to is set to a different time zone than the one it was migrated from, that could easily cause this to show up on a device even if no settings were changed on that device by the user.

My issue started with IOS 8 also. Google Calendar is my go between for syncing Outlook and my iPhone, and has been for over 2 years. Now with IOS 8, an appointment entered into either Outlook or my iPhone displays the GMT issue on the iPhone. However, if I enter an appointment in Google calendar the GMT issue does not occur on my iPhone.

Hey rick287,

You are welcome. However, please do not just wait for a fix from Apple. If you have not already done so, please submit a bug report here:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

Posting in the forum is far less likely to get Apple to make this a priority than if they receive multiple reports from users.

Nearly 37,000 people have viewed this thread as of today. If even 1% of those people simply click the above link and report this, I think we could be sure this will get addressed sooner than later.

JG

Apparently this is an "emerging" issue when I spoke to apple people. They know about it, but right now, their only suggestion is to restore factory settings, which I'm resistant to, because I don't want to lose all of my old text messages and don't know which 3rd party app would be best to save all of my messages. The guy I spoke to suggested taking screen shots of all of my old messages before restoring factory settings, which he agreed is pretty stupid. But Apple hasn't made it possible for us to save old text messages and iMessages in an efficient way....yet.

I'm so annoyed by this because whenever I fix the GMT issue by editing the event, it pushes me to a day ahead and sometimes I get it wrong and it's on the wrong day. I don't like how this affects my business activities especially - important meetings! Grrr. Not happy. Grumble grumble grumble.

I wish Apple would officially respond to any post here so we don't feel so abandoned by them!