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

I've gone through all the settings, changed them all back and forth multiple times.

Again, in my case the problem started weeks after my last iOS upgrade... it seems that for the majority of people here the problem started with an iOS upgrade, but for me it just happened after several weeks on 8.1 with no problems. Yesterday it was fine - today it was not.

Today in the course of troubleshooting, after doing all the obvious restarts etc., I tried installing 8.1.2 to see if it would help but it did not.

Hey guys,

Unfortunately I have now also joined the apple iOS8 bug club!! I have been on 8.1 for about 6 weeks with no issues and miraculously, I woke up today with all of my new calendar entries displaying in GMT time. Just to clarify:

- I did not touch or change any settings

- All settings are correct for timezone, timezone override is off

- I import my gmail calendar into my iPhone 5s and iPad air. If I make an entry on the gmail calendar on a web browser, it shows up fine.

- If I make an entry on my iPhone 5s, it displays perfectly on the gmail calendar, and perfectly on my iPhone which is still running iOS 7.. surprise surprise but is displayed with the GMT crap on my iPad air only.

- If I make an entry on the iPad air, it appears with GMT on the iPad, but perfect again on my iPhone 5s with iOS7 and perfectly on my gmail calendar.

I am no techie but I certainly agree that this is a bug integrated into iOS8. Anyway, long story short, I freaked out tonight and went to my local apple store genius bar. We reset the device, deleted and then re-added the calendar account, checked all the settings and finally restored the device to a new one. When all of that failed, the girl replaced my apple ipad air with a brand new model that automatically comes with iOS8 installed, and low and behold, same bug.

She couldn't believe it and even brought in 2 other managers to have a look at the issue, but they were all dumbfounded.

The only temporary relief I have found, is once I add an entry into my calendar, I wait for it to display the GMT and then click edit. Once there, I edit the time and click on timezone and change it to Sydney, then it all settles down. But it means manually correcting every single diary entry that I make, each time I do it. And as I use my calendar for an appointment schedule for my clients every 30 minutes, it's less than ideal. Here is hoping that apple sort it out ASAP.

JG, I tested on iPad and iPhone, IOS both 8.1.1 but had iPad 2 and iPhone 5S. Created appointments in EST with my Exchange account on iPad, and invited test accounts (one in Exchange and the other in GMail). In this case, the Exchange accounts on the iPad showed no Time Zone errors or offsets. I double-checked on iPhone as well. Didn't see the GMT issue, with the organizer Exchange account.

However surprisingly: the iPhone and iPad both see offset GMT in appointment, if I view it on the test GMail account on an iPhone or iPad. It sits in correct time on the calendar, but the appointment shows two time zones in start and end time of -5 GMT. So in addition to 10pm, we have a 2am GMT. The strange part is: I see the GMT offset on iPhone/iPad but NOT in the GMail account proper on computer/web interface. Only the IOS devices show GMT. I would imagine this might not be an issue at first glance, but if an appointment is further modified in any way, it could get chaotic I would think.

So basically I wasn't expecting to go down a Google rabbit hole, but it's just my first test. A coworker did a similar test using all IOS 7 devices and exhibited no GMT errors. To completely rule out Google, I made some test invites there and accepted on IOS devices, saw no GMT offsets in that direction.

So it's possibly too early to make absolute assumptions. But certainly the IOS device, in this case exhibits a form of the GMT bug. It's just not exactly same symptoms in this case. My workflow with Exchange is ok, my workflow with GMail shows the bug. Definitely I still point at the IOS devices as the source of flaw. Just that I was expecting to replicate the exact conditions that you were experiencing JG, and so far I couldn't.

Hi FrankCPNYC. To be clear....I am seeing this bug on appointments...not meeting requests.

As for appointments, what you are describing in your most recent post exactly matches what I am experiencing: appointment graphically appears at correct time in calendar views, but lists the GMT time and if you open it, it is actually in GMT time. If you are still not 100% clear what I am talking about, please watch the video I did to demonstrate this bug: http://youtu.be/cgP1zyi_iV8

You can replicate the exact behavior you are describing using an Exchange calendar, Google calendar, etc. It does it on all of them, because the data that is creating the GMT transposition on the receiver iOS devices is being generated by the originator iOS devices......it just gets passed through whatever subscribed calendar you are using that the devices are syncing with. It is put into the appointment by the originator iOS device.....is not read by 3rd party software like Outlook or Google Calendar so you don;t see it in the web or desktop versions,.....ad it IS read by iOS on the receiver device which then transposes the appointment time to GMT.

If you do a test using two iOS devices running 7.x and look at the very same appointments that show up as GMT on your 8.x devices, the 7.x devices will show these very same unedited appointments correctly....because iOS 7.x does not have the bug in it.

Hi,

In my experience it is not only an iOS-bug. It does also show up when adding an appointment in the Calendar app on a Mac with OS X 10.10.1 (bot iMac and MacBook). First nothing is wrong, but after a few seconds (after syncing with my Google-account) the new added appointment is also in GMT. It does not show the (GMT) until you click on the appointment.

The strange thing is that the bug showed up spontaneously (in my case) three days ago, without changing any setting and without updating anything. Because of that, I think the solution for this bug is not client-side, but server-side. It looks like some incompatibility between the Apple calendar-handling (both iOS en Mac OS) and non-Apple environments (such as Google, Exchange, etc.).

Someone else experiencing the bug also on the Calendar app on the Mac?

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.

I contacted the company who writes the program that I use to sync Outlook to Google Calendar called gSyncit. Great program BTW. But I told them what was happening and they said they had replicated the problem and have reached out to Google to see if they will look deeper into this. They have not heard back from Google yet. Hopefully this company might make some headway as it appears they work closely with Google for their sync program. I will update this if I hear back from them.

There are a number of people, many on this thread, also experiencing the issue with Exchange. Not to burst your theory but, if you have different types of servers out there that the IOS devices are communicating with, the constant in the equation is the IOS device. And for many that's where they see the GMT. I'm more concerned with trying to determine how to recreate it from scratch. And if doing so requires having more than one device. Some posters here can wipe their devices or jump on new or borrowed devices and still recreate the problems. I haven't been able to replicate that yet. Also what is baffling is many posters here saying issue pops up after being stable on 8.1 for a while. So it's not exactly at time of update when the issue starts, but delayed. In my instance I do have a user that pretty much mirrors JG's scenario. Same issue and Google isn't even in the mix at all there. I definitely want to see what occurs if JG takes his two devices and tests with a different account that his Admin gives him. That would be very telling. You want to see if you can duplicate the same issues, with same IOS devices, to same server(s) but with a different account.

My MS Exchange host, AppRiver, has done extensive work on this bug. They posted an article about it on their blog today:

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

It appears that what iOS 8.x is doing, is displaying events at the local time where they are created, but transposing the actual time of the events to the time zone where the user's Exchange host (or other mail server) is located (or at least whatever time zone is set on that server). I have learned that my particular server is set to GMT. That's why my iOS device originated events get transposed to GMT when my other iOS devices sync them down. If your subscribed calendar server is set to PST, your events are probably getting transposed to PST etc. The AppRiver article explains this really well.

This also potentially explains the recent instances where users of Google Calendar....who claim that they were not experiencing this bug even after updating to iOS 8.x, suddenly started to see it over the last few days even though they did not change any settings on their devices. If this happened to you, it's possible that your Google Calendar was being hosted on a server set to the same time zone you and your device are in, and that Google changed the time zone on your server or migrated your account to another server set to a different time zone. That would potentially now cause the dual time zone bug to appear when it did not previously appear. And it would do this without you having changed a single thing on your devices.

Apple has told several people this is a "feature." Well, it's a pretty idiotic "feature" IMHO. No one cares what time zone their server is in. What a user cares about is 1) the time zone they normally live/work in; and 2) the time zone they happen to be in right now (if travelling etc). Your server could be located anywhere in the world. It's ridiculous in this day and age ..... where cloud based hosting is so prevalent.... for a software engineer to presume that the server a user syncs with is going to be physically located in the same time zone as that user. Even in the case of a corporate hosted Exchange account, in many cases the company servers are going to be located in a different location and time zone than users in regional offices etc. What stuns me is how basic of a bug this is and how easy it would have been to ID it in beta testing if anyone at Apple was paying even minimal attention to quality testing.

If anyone has the ability to change the time zone on the Exchange server they are using as the subscribed calendar for multiple iOS devices, they could test what happens if they change the server time zone to match the time zone of the devices that are syncing to it to see if when that happens, the dual time zones disappear. If anyone does that, please report your results back here.

Also remember that Apple doesn't care about doing anything to fix this until a large number of their customers get annoyed enough to report this to them. This bug isn't something like bad WiFi performance that everyone notices immediately and has the ability to describe when they call Apple. Millions of Apple customers are teenagers, housewives, retirees etc. who don't sync their calendars and/or probably wouldn't notice that this was a problem even if they did sync their calendars. These user types aren't likely to report this issue to Apple in the first place, and even if they did try to report it, they might not be able to articulate the problem 100%. These are user types who might be satisfied when the Genius at their local Apple store tells them "That's a feature...it's supposed to work that way." If you want something done about this sooner rather than later.....then YOU need to report it to Apple.

Here's a link to do that: http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

By chance I stumbled upon a workaround that actually consistently works on an iDevice running iOS 8.1.1 (havent tested this on 8.1.2). I have been experiencing this issue on the stock iOS Calendar app since upgrading to iOS 8 on an iPhone 4S, an iPad Air and an iPhone 6. Some events, not all, added via the Calendar app or using other Apple apps via Apple Data Detectors would trigger the GMT "bug" onto events hosted on Google calendars.

I read this entire thread and tried many of the workarounds proposed, but none worked.

This, however, did work: I edited the events that had the time zone labeled as GMT in a 3rd-party calendar app -- Fantastical -- and simply changed the event's time zone from GMT to my local time zone, which is also the system time zone. I saved the change in Fantasical and the GMT time zone reference disappeared. I then opened the Apple stock Calendar app and the change stuck. No more GMT on those events. I had tried to make the same time zone edits using the stock app, but those changes did not stick (as many people posting also experienced). But using a 3rd-party calendar app seems to have done the trick.

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

@CSeanK: Doing an iTunes restore does not resolve this issue. As documented above in this thread, this has been attempted by several people without success. I personally attempted this...going FAR beyond a restore....I actually had both of my iDevices completely restored to a fresh image of iOS 8 by Apple, recreated my synced accounts (mail calendar etc.) from scratch...and that did not resolve the problem.

Other users have confirmed (again previously in this thread) that even a brand new Apple device running iOS 8.x taken straight out of the shrink wrapped box at the Apple store, exhibits this bug.

The only way a restore is going to resolve this issue is if you are somehow able to restore your device to iOS 7.x which does not have this bug. If there was any way I could do that I would do it in a heartbeat.

This issue is NOT resolved by a restore from backup nor a restore as new. This thread, and others like it, confirm that a restore does not resolve this issue.

Tried that but it still shows GMT below the actual time I put in my Google calendar on my Iphone. Does yours show the same as mine?

I have the same problem after I upgraded to 8.1.2. Did not have that problem in 8.1.1. I use Google calendar as my primary on my IPhone. Anything created on google.com/calendar shows up fine on IPhone without GMT, anything created on IPhone (targeting Google Calendar) shows up with the GMT. Any modifications to this "GMT appointment" on google.com/calendar makes a duplicate on the calendar and shows up as duplicate on IPhone, but not on google web calendar.

So, I rolled back my IPhone to 8.1.1. Guess what, same issue!! So, the rollback didn't fix it....

As someone previously mentioned, I don't care if GMT shows up in the appointments (though it clutters the calendar), but the EDIT of that appointment is the killer as it "magically" wants to use GMT for modifications.

Wife's phone is on 8.1.1 with similar setup to her google calendar. No issues.

Edit: So is this Apple's problem? Or Google's problem? Or both? Confused.