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

Well, the fact is that Google is not adhering to standard iCalendar format... It is entirely possible, however, that Google used this non-standard format for a long time and that iOS 7 and lower did support that custom timezone field, but Apple somehow messed it up in iOS 8. That still does not put Google off the hook for this issue...

BTW, I have several Exchange calendars on my iPhone, and they do not exhibit this problem (could be due to Exchange server versions and/or its settings).

Just did another comparison between Google Calendar account (which has GMT problem) and an Exchange account (which does not):

- Google Calendar: iOS is sending iCalendar .ics file to Google to create an event (Content-Type: text/calendar)

- Exchange 2010: iOS is using ActiveSync protocol to add events (Content-Type: application/vnd.ms-sync.wbxml)

I'd like to add another piece of evidence. I'm not sure what to make of it. Events initially created on my computer will not exhibit this behavior. Even if I use my iPhone to edit the start and end times. Here's a screenshot of two events. After creation, both of them had their start and end times modified on my iPhone and on my computer.

I sync my iPhone calendar with Google. When I create a new entry in the calendar and save it, the time zone changes to GMT. Even if I explicitly choose my local time zone before saving, this still changes after saving the entry.

How is this not a bug?

This was not the behaviour prior to iOS 8. Previously a created calendar entry would remain in the local time zone even when synching with Google.

I don't see the event time for an entry displayed within the entry. I only see it lining up against the time vertically. To see the precise time, I tap the entry.

Like in the screenshot here, only the first Test entry at 19:00 is shown with 15:00 as the entry is in GMT. The other entries are in the local time zone so the time is not displayed within the entry in this view.

AFAIK this is the way the calendar app has always worked even in older versions of iOS. You will only see a time on the entry if the time zone is different from the one you have set on your phone.

Update:

Well, I'm sorry to report that my "fix" doesn't seem to be working now — not sure if this is due to the last update, or if I just didn't test thoroughly enough. Whatever the reason, it now appears that even if you create an event in an iCloud calendar, as soon as you switch it to a non-iCloud calendar (in my case, Google), the GMT setting is added. :-(

Steve D.

This is not going to fix it... eventually the issue will return. This GMT happened a year ago to me and I went through all the Google calendar settings changes and resubmitted calendars etc. and fixed the issues... then viola... IOS8 happens and I have GMT again. ALL of my Google settings never changed. All appropriate boxes were checked or unchecked. There is NOTHING left to fix on Google calendar or exchange calendar settings. IOS 8 is the issue.

I assume your system is in the CST time zone based on the 6 hours difference from GMT. If you look at an event and say it starts at 10AM CST or it starts at 4PM GMT is equivalent, there is no ambiguity. Editing the event in either GMT (changing from 4PM to say 4:30PM) or CST (changing from 10AM to 10:30AM) is exactly the same, it is a consistent change. Are we in agreement on this point?

Now, you have a valid point of view namely "...the times displayed when editing the time of an appointment should be in the times you entered, not in GMT time..." but it is no more and no less than your point of view on how you expect the system to behave. I may have a different point of view which says "...events will be created, by default, in your local time zone, all subsequent changes to the event time will be performed in GMT..." you must agree that it is a viable point of view, even if you do not like it.

Unless we can reach an agreement, which we will specify and document in a design document we can not, we can not decide what is a bug and what is not since we have differing reference points. Since we are not privy to the Apple design documents there is no way for us to tell if this is a bug or not. Only Apple can make that determination since they specified and designed and implemented the system as they thought was desirable.

The fact that the system behaved differently prior to the iOS 8 update makes it somewhat suspicious this change in behavior was intentional, but nonetheless it may have been for reasons which Apple has not communicated to the public. You must give then this benefit of doubt.

There is no absolute here which by which one can say this is a bug or not unless we have access to a common and agreeable reference.

Having said all of the above do I think that the behavior of the calendar past the iOS 8 update is desirable, I am definitely agreeing with you it is very bad, it is annoying, it is inconsistent, and Apple better listen to the outrage in its community of users over this change. For them to stay quite and not publish an intention to fix this problem in a future update to iOS is disrespectful of their customers, in my opinion. Nonetheless, the system is working correctly even if in an annoying manner. This is my only point, it is not a bug. It requires a change in requirements. Please read mikalh's post of January 27, 2015 who was the first as far as I can tell to argue in this discussion that this is not a bug.

I happen to use GMT a lot because I'm a pilot and file flight plans in GMT. When I us my iPhone 6 (8.1.3) and create an event in EST (my time zone) and, upon editing the event, it has changed to GMT I can "see" that is still at the "correct" world time because I'm intimately familiar with GMT and have been converting times to and from GMT for years for my flight plans.

However, my wife ... and 95% of Apple users ... have NO idea what GMT is, they have never converted time to or from GMT and they are "lost" when they have to move a meeting that is suddenly in a time zone they are not familiar with and, in most cases, never heard of.

Given that Apple produces their products for the masses and has built a reputation on providing the masses with easy to use, intuitive software, I'm willing to go out on a limb here and say they would never intentionally do this. Thus, since I THINK it is an unexpected or unintended result, I'm willing to wager that it is a "bug" ... even if the time remains "correct" technically.

If it is not a "bug" and this is how they intended it to work .. then some designer needs to be fired. Mistakes are forgivable ... everyone makes them. But to do this "intentionally" would inexcusable. It would be like changing the positions of the letters on your keyboard. If -- on purpose -- you moved the E to where the S is and moved the S to where the T is and move the T to where the E was I guess that would not be a "bug" because you moved the letters on purpose ... but it most certainly would be inordinately stupid. Since I don't think they're stupid, it's a bug.

Daryle

Go to Google and search "GMT Bug" ..... LOTS of results with most of them accurately pointing to APPLE as THE problem. Come on Apple ... step up, publicly acknowledge the issue, and tell us when you will fix this problem!!!

Appears to be fixed for me for new appointments. Appointments created on my phone during the GMT bug phase that I had not edited still show the GMT time. If I go in and edit, they no longer show the GMT time.

To be clear there is no way iOS 8.1.3 fixed this - I have an iPhone 6 Plus and have not loaded this software update.

Also wanted to give a shout out to JG for all his hard work on this. Sorry for the Exchange users who are still suffering with their Outlook calendars.

Hmmm…no response. Maybe my last post was too confusing. Or maybe everyone is just tired of all of this. But I suspect that this whole time zone problem has 2 components, which is why we’re seeing different behavior with different services. How about a simpler approach:

Google Calendar users, try this: change the time zone in iOS, then schedule an event in the Calendar App. Notice that after syncing, the Google Calendar time and time zone appears in parenthesis (this USED to show the GMT time, until the recent Google Calendar change). I think this is still a problem, but since most people have the Google Calendar time zone set to the same time zone as their iPhones (and Macs), the problem has essentially gone away for them.

For example, if your Google Calendar is in PST and your iPhone is in CST and you schedule a meeting at 3pm CST, then (1pm PST) will appear in the event after syncing. In fact the event you just scheduled got switched from CST to PST. But you just scheduled the event on your phone in CST, so you'd think it would retain the local time zone of your phone. I think that this is a bug and if so, I’m curious if it is fixed in iOS 8.2. This fix should also address the GMT problem with all other services that still point to GMT rather than a user set time zone.

By the way, I have been following along on this thread for several months, so unless I got tired of reading and missed it, I haven’t seen this particular angle. Please forgive me if I missed it.

I sync using Google calendar and fortunately for me the GMT issue has gone away. I am convinced this is an IOS bug. For those of you who don't think this is the case please explain why, prior to the workaround that Google did, when I tried to edit an appointment on my iPhone that was entered for 10 AM Pacific time, the time showed up as GMT time on the edit screen. If Apple recognized the appointment time as 10 AM Pacific, which it did since that is when it showed in my calendar, why didn't that same time display when editing the appointment time? The only answer can be is that there was, and still is, a bug in IOS.

hey bebopper--thanks for this suggestion! i never consciously use Google calendar, only the iPhone calendar, i don't have a google cal app on my phone. i think long ago, i did have a google cal app that i was trying out for a while because i liked having email alerts, but i got so i never used it and deleted it off my phone. I never use Google calendar on the web. I do use a gmail account and of course , the intrusive and inconvenient relationship with google through you tube in recent years. But until iOS 8, i never even realized my default calendar had something to do with Google, i didn't even know there was a default calendar setting. but when the GMT thing came up, i checked those settings and eventually speculated that the problem had something to do with iOS 8 and my gmail apple ID user name, because of all the people on this thread who have problems with Google calendar. Why i was having the 30 minute alert all of a sudden with iOS 8 but no one else was, was puzzling, but since changing over to an iCloud default calendar fixed all my calendar problems including 30 minute alert, i moved on. Still, it bothered me that iOS 8 had this problem where it didn't exist before (in November i got an iPhone 6, replacing a 4s with iOS 5, and that i couldn't use the default calendar i had always used.

So after reading your suggestion, i explored Google Calendar and sure enough, there was a setting in Calendar notifications to notify of events 30 minutes before. I changed that to no notifications and now it's gone and i can use my previous default calendar with no issues. The GMT issue had inexplicably stopped happening a few weeks ago. I am still using iOS 8.1.2. No known changes that would affect the GMS bug. Also, my entries into iPhone calendar are backing up to iCal, which was the third problem i was having that was "fixed" by changing to an iCloud default calendar. That seemed to go away around the time that GMT went away. the one thing that is not syncing when i use my non-iCloud default calendar setting is iCloud--there is simply no syncing unless i switch to an iCloud default calendar. I hope they will fix that, but for now, i'm glad to be back using my gmail username default calendar.

I also can see what so many people having this problem don't want to switch from Google calendar default to iCloud. I can see that it has more versatility.

Thanks so much.

Start here: https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/179200?hl=en

If the information that is in Google Cal doesn't match iCal or iPhone cal, then that's a different problem. Have you tried the settings at the links in this message?

https://support.google.com/a/answer/1051749?hl=en

included 2 links. In case the links are filtered out, Google search "google calendar multiple timezones"