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

I finally figured out how to fix this and had to come back and post the fix! 🙂

Go into your Gmail calendar via the web. Open the meeting, select event details to open the details up. On the expanded meeting screen, click on the meeting time at the top left. You will see that it expands out the start and end, and you will see an option to the right for "Time Zone". Click on that; it should default to the time zone in your Settings (which I presume will be correct) and select Done. Then choose Save.

Once you iPhone refreshes, the GMT other time disappears. Voila! So glad I figured out the fix.

There is a work around that will disable the GMT. I posted it about 10 pages ago. Do a search for my user name, Gator5000e and you will find it. But to quickly summarize, create your appointment. Once the GMT appears, click edit to edit the appointment. Change the appointment to an ALL DAY appointment. Then immediately change it back. Once you do that the GMT will go away and you will be in your correct time zone. You then have to change the start and stop times for the appointment for your time zone because after you do the ALL DAY on/off, the start and stop times will be the GMT times. Just change y our start and stop times back to the ones you want and save the appointment. The GMT issue will be gone from that appointment.

@JG - you have been particularly helpful in this topic. Thank you for the boilerplate text for the bug report.

I've been reading (almost through all 28 pages), and testing various discussed theories between Google calendar and my iPhone 5s on Google sync (not exchange). I noticed that when items are entered on the iPhone calendar, the sync *removes the time zone*. I read Google's explanation of how they determine time zones, which involves converting all appointments to GMT, and then determining the time based on time zone settings.
To minimize potential disruptions of these changes, Google Calendar relies onUTC time (Coordinated Universal Time, previously known as Greenwich Mean Time or GMT) -- a single “true” time -- to help avoid conflicts in all locations.

The appointments I entered in my phone show PST. Once it syncs with Google (typically instantly), it shows no time zone other than GMT. In Google Calendar, they show NO time zone associated. When edited on the iPhone to my time zone, it will then show correctly as PST in both places. If I open the appointment in Google and ADD my time zone, it will correctly apply to the phone as well. When the time zone is removed from Google, it reverts to GMT on the phone. (All appointments created in Google Calendar do not change time zone, regardless of where edits made.)

It looks like sync is causing the preferred time zone to be *removed* from appointments created in the phone. (No time zone = GMT shown) When a time zone is applied, it keeps the new time zone (although when applied in the phone, the actual time needs to be altered as well).

I can't explain why this would also be the case for Exchange other than the time zone is somehow not linked with the iPhone created appointment when it syncs.

This issue did not present itself on my coworker's iPhone using a Hotmail calendar.

@JG in SB - Thanks for keeping on this from the beginning. As a multi iDevice user, I have also experienced this issue. I wasn't thinking much about it, but my wife has been experiencing lots of odd behavior and asked her IT support (me) to look into it.

This thread contains a lot of very good information, work arounds, partial fixes, etc.

As I read and tinkered, I came across a hypothesis on the root cause of the problem.

Let's say Apple is doing us a favor and NOT tagging our calendar entries with a time zone. When our iCal/CalDav servers receive this entry, they are left to guess at what time zone to place this in. Since all iCalendar entries are translated into ZULU, GMT, +0 by the client (see RFC 5545 for the iCalendar standards), the server correctly senses that the entry is GMT. Or in cases of servers set to other time zones, the local zone of the server. This would account for some of the variety being experienced by users across the world.

Now, once Google, exchange, or your other server using iCal interface has your entry, it stores it as a GMT entry. Open one of these entries on Google's web interface and you will see no time zone selected. When it bounces back to your device(s), it is flagged as GMT and converted to the local time zone for display. Users with iCloud that set their default time zone seem to have better luck with it returning correctly, but on Google, it sees a GMT entry and therefore stores a GMT entry and serves up the GMT entry.

Work arounds include opening the entry and getting a time zone set using a variety of methods (e.g. web interface, another client program, calendar and flipping all day on/off and setting a time zone, etc.)

So, the fix would be that Apple needs to update the calendar program to explicitly provide the user's current calendar time zone for all new entries created. This is set in TZID, TZNAME, etc. properties. They can also be in a UTC-OFFSET format that indicates the entry is GMT-5 (EST), GMT-7 (MST), etc. These settings can be global to an entry or uniquely set for the start and end times. You will note that Google allows users to specify the start time with a time zone and end time with a different time zone and it figures it out.

The only way to prove this issue is to sniff the data coming from an iDevice and decode the calendar data being shipped to the server... or have a server where you can inspect the entries upon receipt. I don't have the equipment available to test/prove the issue, but I'm sure someone on the Apple side of the house may be able to prove/disprove this theory.

@sterns003 - I saw your response after typing this up and think you are pretty much on the mark. Exchange generally handles time as UTC, but there are some exceptions. There are a few versions out there and some seem to not experience the issue, while others do. It looks like some exchange instances may use iCal, which could account for this. If the apple calendar program is not tagging a time zone property, servers will be left to guess. Since it is GMT, it won't be "wrong" just won't have the proper time zone stored to help with display.

After reading many of these posts, and the helpful tips in circumventing the issue, I called Apple. Here's the latest. APPLE is hearing our voices and engineers are working aggressively on the problem. They admit it is an iOS 8 issue and they are working to resolve it but as you can imagine, this isn't a simple problem to solve and may take some time. While "Samantha" had no ETA on when the fix would come out, she did provide two helpful suggestions:

1. Make calendar appointments using an iMac device rather than iOS 8

2. Log into iCloud via a work PC and make calendar appointments that way.

Hang in there people!!!

I found the solution! It turns out that if you create a new calendar entry, just choose your correct Time Zone located under the "Starts" date and time selection. You'll notice it is set to GMT. Once you do this for one entry, all future ones will be fixed. Unfortunately, the past ones will not be fixed and changing the time zone after the fact is annoying at best.

Hope that helps,

Doug

I don't have the time to read all 30 pages of this thread, so forgive me if this post is irrelevant after some earlier comment(s), but...

The solution posted by Adven on page 3 of this thread totally worked for me (after checking the time zone override, etc.).

Here's what he/she posted, and it fixed it brilliantly for me:

"This solution may or may not work for others, but it appears to have worked on mine. From Month view, tap a calendar entry with GMT listed, tap Edit, tap Starts, tap Time Zone, type current time zone city and select from drop-down, tap Edit Event, Do same for Ends. tap Done. If it didn't work, try same steps with two more existing calendar entries. When I did it, all GMT references disappeared."

Thanks, Adven!!!

For what it's worth, this appears to me to be a problem with the iPhone calendar app. My wife has a Google Apps for Work account, and I connected her iPhone 5 running iOS 8 to this account. Appointments created anywhere show up on her Apple Calendar app with the additional GMT text.

HOWEVER: If I use another calendar app (Mynd, Week Cal both work for me) the appointments show up just fine. So until Apple fixes the bug (don't hold your breath), try another calendar app.

One other workaround that might be preferable for some people. I installed the Sunrise calendar app (it's free), and linked it to my Google calendars. Appointments created in Sunrise get added to Google, and once in Google it syncs with iOS calendar. Because iOS treats these like an appointment created in Google, and since we've already established that such items do not receive the messed up GMT treatment, everything is fine in iOS. You can then edit/move/etc the appointment in iOS and the problem never appears.

To summarize: I create all new appointments in Sunrise, and then never use Sunrise for anything else. Once the event is created I can use the iOS calendar app the way we always did.

Some people may not want to use a separate app. But I prefer not having to always manually edit every new appointment to remove the GMT, so using a separate app just for creating appointments actually saves me overall time and frustration. And it also removes the risk of forgetting to manually edit, or getting bit by "GMT tomorrow" issue in my previous post.

Yes, I use the Sunrise calendar for making appointments, and then that sends the info to my Google calendar, which then forwards that info the standard iOS calendar and doesn't show the GMT bug. It's the same reason why creating new appointments directly in the google calendar doesn't show the problem in iOS, but using Sunrise on my iPhone is less tedious than entering in the google calendar directly.

But no, it's not true I don't use my iOS calendar at all anymore. Just the opposite -- as I wrote, "I create all new appointments in Sunrise, and then never use Sunrise for anything else." I use iOS calendar for everything except making new appointments, since I like the iOS calendar's interface and features, and if it wasn't for this GMT issue I'd use it exclusively. But you or anyone else may end preferring Sunrise and want to use it exclusively.

Note that this workaround doesn't apply to a calendar app like Fantastical, since Fantastical seems to add appointments directly to the iOS calendar (as compared to Sunrise which adds it to the Google calendar first), and as we all now know, anything that starts from the iOS calendar and then goes to Google will then get the GMT bug when it returns.

For calendar events that are already created...In your calendar app, Edit calendar event time (Time zone arrow below the start and end time) you can change the time zone setting. You may have to type in you local time zone.

For new calendar event... (In your calendar app) Make sure you set the local time zone (below the start and end time). Following this event entry my new events came up with the correct time zone. Hope this helps!

Just so you know mshelbym, you STILL didn't get a straight answer from Apple. The answer they gave you is BS and they know it is BS. Several of us have received written confirmation from Apple that they know this is all due to a bug in iOS and that they are working on a fix for it. Some of thiose confirmations are posted in this very thread....

To make sure you understand: I don't use Google for anything. Not for mail, not for Calendar, not for documents. No Google products whatsoever. I have this BUG in full force. I use Microsoft Hosted Exchange. So the problem is not generated by Google as Apple informed you. The common factor to everyone who experiences this problem, regardless of what server they use to sync their devices, is iOS.

Apple's standard procedure is to lie to anyone who calls in and first tell them "we have never heard of this before." Then they will waste your time "troubleshooting" whatever it is you called in about that they already know is an issue caused by THEM. Then they will inform you the issue is caused by something you did or some other service you used.

If you want any results on this, just report it as a bug directly using this link:

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

OR if you call in just immediately tell them you want to be escalated to Engineering support.

Also, since nobody reads previous posts before commenting, again, here is a link to an article that described exactly what causes this bug...iOS....

http://blog.appriver.com/2014/12/ios-8-calendar-events-display-dual-time-zones/

Notice the above is from AppRiver, an Exchange service provider....not Google.

Gentlemen --- some of you are new to this LONG thread and haven't read all the hundreds of comments so let me save you that process .... This is a bug in iOS. Some contributors have confirmation of this from Apple in writing. This happens to phones where the user uses Google and Gmail and it also happens to people who use Exchange and NEVER use Google or Gmail for anything. Some suggested "fixes" work temporarily as a patch for some users but the "bug" can reappear without warning. (Uninstalling Gmail and then installing it again worked for me -- for about 3 days). The only "fix" that works for everyone is to switch to a calendar like Sunrise. We are all hoping this bug is addressed with the next update to iOS (8.1.3) that should be out in a week or two.

@cowboybuddah: What triggered it is appointment data going up to your Google Calendar server and then syncing back down to your iOS device. The way this bug works, is that it causes any appointment created on an iOS device to acquire the time zone that the clock of your hosted calendar server is set to...which is GMT on most Google and Exchange servers. It then transposes your appointments to whatever that time zone is.

This is discussed at length in the thread but every few weeks a new bunch of people find this thread and they go about trying to "figure this out" from scratch. I'm not trying to be snarky etc... I am trying to save you and others who might not scroll more than one or two pages back some time.

This bug is not generated by Google. It is generated by iOS. How do I know that for sure you ask? I don't use Google for anything and I have this bug. I use Exchange. I reported this to AppRiver, my Exchange host in early November. They spent a bunch of time working on it with Apple Engineering Tech Support and Apple confirmed...in writing...that this is a bug in iOS 8. Of course some other guy at Apple says it is a "feature" and this is the "expected behavior," but if you read through this thread one thing that will become evident is that Apple's internal communications among its tech support staff are p1ss poor.

Here's an article AppRiver wrote that explains exactly what is going on:

http://blog.appriver.com/2014/12/ios-8-calendar-events-display-dual-time-zones/

Follow this thread for a few days and watch new people show up and proclaim the "Found the FIX!!!" and that they are "pretty sure this is not a bug in iOS 8 but it is a bug with Google Calendar."

Sorry that it came back for you, but your experience simply further confirms this is a bug in iOS. The only people who can fix it are the engineers at Apple, and several of us have been informed they are in fact working on a fix.

Keep your fingers crossed that the fix is part of iOS 8.1.3 which is coming out any day now....

nayo2002 wrote:

i found a way to fix it. Go to google calendar on Safari. It will ask you to upgrade to the latest version and set your time zone on the top of the web page. After you do both, the problem will go away. It seems like it's a Google Calendar update that cleared out your default time zone so it's showing GMT time on devices.

As a clarification. You need to go to the non-mobile version of Google calendar via iPad or a computer. This worked on all my devices. Can someone else check?