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

FYI .... IMHO... per other posts over the past 90 days --- the root case issue is with iOS entries created using the Calendar App. This app has a BUG and Apple is well aware of the problem... and they will hopefully address it with the next iOS 8.x release (crossing my fingers).

INTERIM SOLUTION -- until Apple fixes this horrible BUG -- Just DITCH the iOS 8.x Calendar app... and move to another iOS calendar app

Three calendars that seem to be working fine (tested on my 4 accounts -- 3 Office365 and 1 MS Exchange) are:

+ Calendars 5 (Readdle)

+ Calendar+ (Readdle)

+ Acompli

While not ideal -- these apps "do the job" and are a good bridge solution until Apple addresses the GMT Bug from ****.

nayo2002 wrote:

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?

Has anyone tried this? It works on all new calendar entries. Existing entries will still show GMT

I have been suffering from this issue since the day that iOS 8 came out; yes this was happening on my 5S running iOS 8. This isn't an iPhone 6 issue, it's an iOS 8 issue. I have found that if I create the event in Google, in any way, it shows on my iOS devise correctly. Mobile or not. So, I still use my iOS 8 calendar app on both my iPad and iPhone 6+ but I never add any events through this beccause it will display the GMT thing. It shows up in the correct time slot on my calendar but because it shows the GMT thing I fear that the calendar will switch the event or the "alert" will not sound at the correct time. So to answer your question as to will someone try this, I have tried it and it works fine. The error occurs when the event is created on an iOS device, uploaded to Google, then synced back to the iOS device. If you watch after adding the event, the event will show in the correct time slot and there will be no GMT label as your "progress" dial spins while the event is sent to Google and back to the iOS device but once the sync has completed, violá you have a GMT tag. Something in the upload/download or "sync" is getting corrupt and defaulting to GMT (Google's Master Time, haha).

My fix for this, go to calendar.google.com and create an icon on the home screen, with the share button, then you have quick access to your mobile version of the calendar and if you add something this way, it will display correctly and without the GMT tag on the iOS devise (at least it does for me so I add all new events from my phone in this manner). If I add the event through my laptop using Safari, Chrome or FireFox it will display correctly on my iOS device. If I use the mobile version of my calendar in Safari or Chrome on my both my iPad and iPhone, the event will display correctly. If I use the desktop version on my iPad using Safari or Chrome, it will display correctly on my iOS device. The only time I experience this problem is when I add the event in the native iOS Calendar, from either device. So it's a giant pain in the rear (and time consuming to some degree) to be looking at my calendar in iOS and then having to flip over to the Google mobile version to add the event and then back to the calendar to go on but since Apple and Google can't play nice on this issue, it's a neccesary evil to ensure I am not late or miss a client meeting all together.

One possible fix or workaround…

My wife was having the problem of GMT time showing up on all calendar events, underneath the time for the correct time zone. My phone wasn't having the problem, so I compared all the settings.

The one thing that differed was that she had a Google calendar as her default calendar (the one all new events are created in). Once she changed the default iPhone calendar to her iCloud account, the problem went away. (This setting in found under "Calendars, Mail, iCloud" at the bottom of the Calendar section.)

As long as she creates new events (in the iCloud calendar), saves them, and THEN changes them to whichever calendar she wants them on, the problem seems to be gone.

Hope this helps at least some of you!

Steve Dennett

Obviously, we are all pretty disappointed that Apple failed to fix this bug in the 8.1.3 iOS update. Everyone needs to keep relentless pressure on Apple to take care of this major issue quickly.

I am happy to see that some media outlets specifically pointed out that 8.1.3 does not fix the GMT Bug. This includes:

Forbes

http://www.forbes.com/sites/amitchowdhry/2015/01/27/apple-releases-ios-8-1-3/

MacRumors

http://www.macrumors.com/2015/01/27/apple-releases-ios-8-1-3-with-bug-fixes-stor age-size-reduction/

JBGNews

http://www.jbgnews.com/2015/01/apples-ios-8-calendar-bug-still-present/594409.ht ml

I think it's a big deal that these outlets are making a point of informing their readers that 8.1.3 did not fix this bug. The GMT Bug is now widespread common knowledge to the point that it's newsworthy that 8.1.3 did not include a fix for it. That's not a solution, but it's progress.

Also, literally as I was typing this post, this crossed the 250k view mark. That's over a QUARTER OF A MILLION VIEWS. People are finding this thread when they search for information about the GMT Bug...usually because they are experiencing it. Given that a relatively small % of people who actually have the GMT Bug manifesting on their iOS devices actually go to look up info about it, it's safe to say that a quarter of a million views of this thread indicates probably over a million iOS 8 users are affected by this. Probably more, but a million is a HUGE problem.

If you are new to this thread, and you aren't going to read through the preceding 40+ pages (I don't blame you)....please note the following:

• This is a BUG.
• Apple engineers have confirmed that this is a BUG.
• It isn't due to your server etc. it is baked in to the iOS code.
• You can't fix it by changing settings, resetting your device etc.
• There are a few less than convenient "workarounds" that people have used with varying degrees of success.
• There is no magic "fix."
• Apple needs to fix this, and their software engineers are the only people who can fix it.

As before, the best thing you can do if you want this fixed is to file a bug report with Apple. Here is the link to do that:

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

Keep up the pressure on Apple to FIX THE GMT BUG!

Everyone should thank Steve Dennett for his post. The man is genius. I am going to quote him below:

"My wife was having the problem of GMT time showing up on all calendar events, underneath the time for the correct time zone. My phone wasn't having the problem, so I compared all the settings.

The one thing that differed was that she had a Google calendar as her default calendar (the one all new events are created in). Once she changed the default iPhone calendar to her iCloud account, the problem went away. (This setting in found under "Calendars, Mail, iCloud" at the bottom of the Calendar section.)

As long as she creates new events (in the iCloud calendar), saves them, and THEN changes them to whichever calendar she wants them on, the problem seems to be gone."

Worked for me. Give it a try.

This is by no means a solution, and I have read through most of these posts - but I do have another clue to the puzzle for anyone at Apple who can resolve this.

I am using a Google Apps account (business) along with my iCloud (personal) - the iCloud does not experience the GMT issue, but the Google Calendar does. My Google Calendar settings are to have my correct timezone as the default (PST) as is my iOS and OS X settings. When an event is created in OS X Calendar or iOS Calendar for Google the correct time shows momentarily then adds in a GMT time (as experienced by other users). However, when I open the newly created event in Google Calendar the default timezone is not set. Once I set the timezone in Google Calendar, the GMT time disappears from iOS and OS X. To add to the pot, if I create a new event in Google Calendar without setting the timezone for the event then GMT appears in the iOS and OS X calendars.

Therefore, I see a two part problem. Google does not accurately associate a timezone to the events being created in their own calendar (but may not be an issue if only being used as a local calendar), but Apple is not setting the timezone on syncing calendars. This leads to a Apple and Google are not playing nice again discussion, but there might also be some truth to the statement (made many posts ago) that one of the companies may not be managing the calendar standard correctly to play nice with everyone else.

Hope this gets resolved soon, I can't keep setting aside a part of my week to fix calendar events.

I've been watching this thread for some time now and have read all replies as they come in. I am in NO way technically savvy but out of sheer boredom and irritation to this GMT issue, I decided to play. I went to Google Calendars and looked into my settings... all calendars are individually set to Central Time as they should be but under that is a check box to "show all time zones". I unchecked this box, went in to my iPhone (5S), created a new event and voila no GMT. Created another event with alerts and again, no GMT.

I am skeptical whether it will remain like this but right now.... I like it, GMT is gone.

MIght be be something to try.

All of my settings in gmail calendar are the correct time zone (via the website and on my phone & iPad) and the gmt issue is still occuring. It is an ios8 bug, not people not paying attention to settings. Apple has told me they are aware of the bug via support chat. Apple just doesn't care enough at this point to really fix it. Submit support tickets!

I do not believe there is a way for you or me or anyone else in this discussion to say if this is a bug or not. In order to be able to determine this categorically we need to have access to the design documentation of the calendar app. On January 27, 2015 mikalh argued that this is not a bug. My initial reaction to his reply was similar to your, it is a bug, pure and simple. However, since then I changed my mind the behavior we observe may not be desirable, or intuitive, or friendly, as a matter of fact it is annoying, disturbing, inconsistent with other parts of the same app, but it handles the time of the event correctly. In my case I enter the event time with my local time zone, the event shows correctly in my calendar but as a side effect changed the time displayed for the event to GMT, not clear why but it is correct, no bug so far, unless the design documentation says otherwise. are we in agreement so far? It is not until you try to change the time of the event that this change to GMT may affect you if you are not careful with your next steps.

My point about switching to All-day and back was that the side effect of moving the switch to the right and immediately back to the left actually changed the time of the event from GMT time to local time, for me it shifted the event by 5 hours forward. That is a bug. One could argue that upon switching to an All-Day event the system should have discarded the time of the event since now it is an all-day event and upon switching to a non-all-day event the system should have prompted for a time since it is no longer known. However, instead the system took the event and arbitrarily moved it to a different time from what it was when the event was created. This is a bug, do we agree?

Using the trick of switching to all-day and back and carefully changing the time of the event back to the desirable time zone, and as a side effect lose the GMT connection is a nice workaround but that was not my point.

The GMT "bug" was intended to be a feature in iOS 8, and I won't argue the point, or respond to comments as to whether or not it is truly a "feature". I sure don't like it, but I understand people that work with others in different time zones find it useful. Regardless, it would be nice if there at least was an option to turn-off the "feature".

DON'T waste you time with workarounds.

DO let Apple know what you think by leaving clear, concise, and unemotional feedback at http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

Unlike the Support Community, Apple does review comments sent to the customer feedback URL, and forwards valid comments and suggestions to the appropriate groups within Apple.

Sid Plat, good theory re why Apple employees may not know about the problem, at least for a while though that doesn't mean Apple tech at higher levels shouldn't communicate & make them aware it exists. I'm not sure if I used google calendar long ago, i dont think so but not sure. Anyway for some years, I have only used the Apple calendar. Yet suddenly after replacing my iOS 5 4gs with an ios 8 phone, I began having this crazy confusing messed up GMT problem. Called apple support, was told to do a factory reset on my phone. That made no sense to me so I was unwilling to go through all that trouble & risk. I came to these forums. Unlike other people with the GMT I also had two other weird & serious calendar problems that started at the same time, one was that every new calendar entry gave me an alert 30 minutes before the event, even though I did not choose any alert for the event, and in Settings, it was set to default to NONE! But Calendar was somehow somewhere programmed to default to a 30 minute alert. Tell me that's not an iOS bug. & the other problem that started at the same time as the GMT problem is that suddenly none of my events were syncing with iCloud. No backup of my calendar. An urgent problem. Somewhere in the posts on this thread, someone mentioned that there might be some relationship to the Default Calendar setting in Settings. I had made no changes in my calendar settings when I changed to the new phone. I didn't even know there was a default calendar setting. When I looked at those settings, I found that my default calendar was the user name for my gmail address, which was/is my Apple ID, for some years. The only other option for default calendar were the various icloud calendars such as Work, Family, etc. I found that if I changed my default calendar to one of those instead of the one related to my gmail address, all three of my calendar problems went away, permanently. Since I have no real need to keep my gmail address user name as my default calendar, I changed it to an iCloud calendar & no more problems. How can this be caused by anything but an iOS bug? It can't. My daughter has always used the mac.com iCloud calendar as the default, without any awareness of this setting. She has never experienced the GMT problem & is unaware of it. So for those who can function just using the iCloud calendar as default, this wont be a problem. But in my case, I wasnt even using a third party calendar, I was just using the same calendar default I've used for years, & it was related to my Apple ID which is a gmail address, & suddenly that is no longer acceptable to the iOS

I had the same problem and did not read all 54 pages of this thread... but I noticed your mention of Time Zone Override, which I had never heard of. I found it on my iPhone under Settings/Mail-Contacts-CalendarsTime/Zone Support, turned it off, and now everything displays in the current time zone even with Time Zone Support turned on. Thanks!

After speaking with Apple Support at length in Dec., we determined in was not the IOS Calendar but rather my Google calendar. Google has since fixed this issue, as evident in my recent dates not having any GMT listing in my IOS Calendar. But still, my older dates all had the GMT time. I stumbled on a solution, other than going into each date and editing all.

FIrst, make sure your Google calendar is synced. Then go to you iPhone or iPad's Setting-->Mail, Contacts, Calendars. There unders Calendars, scroll down to "Sync." Most people will have it set to "All Events," but change it to say "Events 2 Weeks Back." Check your IOS Calendar -- yes, it will show only 2-weeks worth of events, but the GMT listing will be gone. Then go back into Settings--> Mail Contacts, Calendars and changed the "Sync" to say "Events 3 Months Back." Keep checking your IOS Calendar and then changing your "Sync" until you have Sync "All Events." All the GMT references should be gone.

I Do hope this helps. I was so relieved to finally have my IOS Calendar back to normal.

After speaking with Apple Support at length in Dec., we determined in was not the IOS Calendar but rather my Google calendar. Google has since fixed this issue, as evident in my recent dates not having any GMT listing in my IOS Calendar. But still, my older dates all had the GMT time. I stumbled on a solution, other than going into each date and editing all.

FIrst, make sure your Google calendar is synced. Then go to you iPhone or iPad's Setting-->Mail, Contacts, Calendars. There unders Calendars, scroll down to "Sync." Most people will have it set to "All Events," but change it to say "Events 2 Weeks Back." Check your IOS Calendar -- yes, it will show only 2-weeks worth of events, but the GMT listing will be gone. Then go back into Settings--> Mail Contacts, Calendars and changed the "Sync" to say "Events 3 Months Back." Keep checking your IOS Calendar and then changing your "Sync" until you have Sync "All Events." All the GMT references should be gone.

I Do hope this helps. I was so relieved to finally have my IOS Calendar back to normal.