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

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.

I've discovered a temporary workaround for Google Calendar users until Apple fixes the bug... Go to http://www.google.com/calendar in the Safari browser on your iDevice and add appointments on the web interface. When transferred over to the iOS calendar app, it does not include the GMT time zone.

As a temporary workaround for those using Google Calendar, here's some screen shots of my 2-step approach.

1. Open Safari on your phone and navigate to http://google.com/calendar - login if necessary. Click the "+" icon near the upper-right corner.

2. Fill-in the desired calendar item details, then click "Save". The new saved item will sync correctly to the iOS Calendar without GMT problems.

Same problem on all our iOS devices. This is strictly an iOS 8 error. We've ruled all else out.

Not due to Time Zone changes or "Time Zone Override"; none of the proposed fixes here work.

We're in the Pacific/"Cupertino" time zone. All Calendar events we create on our iPhones, iPads and computers (using iCal) show up correctly in our time zone on our computers (both in iCal and in Google Calendar on the web).

But events that use Google calendar accounts show up incorrectly on all of our iOS 8 devices: they switch to the GMT time zone. In some Calendar views, both time zones appear. This never happened before iOS 8 (or perhaps 8.1), and nothing else has changed.

NOTE:

1) We never leave the Pacific/"Cupertino" time zone, and have never set our time zones differently.

2) We've never used Time Zone Override.

3) When we create an event (whether using iCal or the iOS Calendar), our correct time zone is the only one displayed. But it switches to GMT in Calendar after the event is created.

4) Those same events still display correctly on iCal and in Google Calendar online. It's strictly an iOS 8 glitch.

5) We've tried every fix people have suggested here, including correcting an event's time zone, resetting iCloud, iOS and Google Calendar time zones, reinstalling, whispering sweet nothings into Siri's ear... nothing works.

This glitch renders the Calendar fairly useless. Needs a fix from Apple.

ETA: Yes, we've sent Apple Feedback on this. Everyone should:

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

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

I spent about an hour last night chatting with Apple support. They blame it on the fact that Google uses GMT, which if you follow the link a few posts up you will see a solid explanation of why they do. In fact, I was directed to the same link by Apple. Apple said it's because they use "a more sophisticated way of showing the time" in the calendar now (cough, cough...trying to cover up their mistake), so that's why devices using iOS 8 are experiencing the problem. Um, news flash: it's not more sophisticated if it doesn't work. It worked fine before and nothing with Google has changed. It's an Apple problem, and after working my way up to a supervisor last night I was told their engineers are working on a solution, but don't have a time frame for a fix. So, for now I'm trying Sunrise. So far so good.

Here is what I know:

This problem only happens on the iPhone and not on a iPad even if it is linked to the same account. It only happens after upgrading to 8.1.2. It also only happens if you save your calendar events to an external application such as Gmail (as in my case), or Outlook, etc. A total reboot (where you lose all your data) does NOT fix the problem. Do NOT do this. It will only make matters worse. MUCH WORSE. I am getting old emails repeating and repeating.

It is very messy but all I can see to do right now is to save all my new events in the "Home" or "Work" folders. And NOT in my external gmail folder.

Hope it helps.

Thank you fouse for the idea to create an icon for Google Calendar on my phone! I just created an appointment directly on the Google calendar on my phone and it showed in my iPhone calendar with the correct time. It gives me a work around for the GMT bug. The down side is I don't see a way to create alerts from the google calendar. And if I go into the iphone calendar to create the alert - it has the alert bug - the time I enter for the first alert shows in the second alert and the time I enter for the second alert shows in the first alert.

For others who aren't sure how to do that. Open Safari, navigate to calendar.google.com, at the bottom of the page is the rectangle with the arrow pointing up - click that, press the icon that says "add to home screen" - icon will now be shown with your apps

By the way, Apple Support was clueless - first they tried to tell me it was expected behavior and was Google's problem. Once I explained his flawed logic, he wanted me to create a new calendar - not a solution for me - the calendar I use is shared by 7 people and I need to continue to use that one. Then he had me reset my settings - did nothing except wipe out all my phone customizations, which I now have to redo. Don't let them do that if you call!

I just updated to iOS 8.1.3 and the GMT bug persist. Until Apple officially patches the GMT bug it is best that you read the threads and refrain from posting "I fixed the issue by doing this ..." or "It worked for me; give this a try".

See this Youtube video so you understand very well what's going on: Informational Rant - iOS 8 Calendar BUG (Converts Appointments to GMT)!!

Alternative solution is to use Sunrise Calendar App.

I don't use iCloud Calendar, MS Office 365, or Exchange Server. I use Google Calendar (CalDav) via iOS Calendar!

To remedy the GMT bug. I use the mobile version of Google Calendar from my iOS devices.

@JG in SB thanks for your post, I appreciate it!

I am 100% with you that Apple's handling of this situation is sub-par and disrespectful to its customers, at least their support folks are aware of it and communicate that something is in the works, that was the response I got yesterday when chatting with a customer rep.

For what ever it's worth I am currently using the switch to All-day and back trick as a workaround, it is ugly and irritating but achieves its purpose of getting rid of the GMT non-sense and takes only few more strokes to enter a new event and needs to be done only once.

Reminder post and also for people first visiting this thread who (understandably) are not reading through the preceding 47 pages of posts:

<<<<<<< DO NOT FACTORY RESET AND/OR WIPE YOUR DEVICE!!! >>>>>>>

Don't do this even if directed to by Apple support staff, many of whom STILL appear not to be aware of the GMT Bug. Resetting your device does not fix this issue because this issue is generated by BUGGY CODE IN IOS. Resetting just sets your device back to factory defaults including a virgin copy of iOS which STILL INCLUDES THIS BUG.

Resetting your device will at best, waste a lot of your time, and at worst end up causing you to lose data that you want to keep.

Instead of wasting your time doing a reset, go and register a bug report with Apple:

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

And if you are really bored and/or frustrated with Apple's total lack of response to this issue, do a Google search for "iOS 8 GMT Bug" and go leave comments on any of the many articles about this bug in mainstream media outlets, including but not limited to Forbes and MacRumors. Negative stories, along with lots of user comments to the effect of "I can't believe Apple has ignored this for over 4 months" etc. might cause Apple to get off the stick a little faster.

<Edited by Host>

No problem. If you are syncing with Exchange and not experiencing this bug, it means that the clock on the server equipment on which your Exchange user account resides is set to the same time zone that your device is set to. For example if you and your iOS device are in Houston, and your Exchange server is at your office in downtown Houston and its clock is set to CST, then you won't experience this bug.....until you and your iOS Device travel to a different time zone. If you come out here to California, all your appointments will transpose 2 hours ahead to CST even though you set them up for times in PST. You will set up an appointment for 2:00 PM and when it syncs over to your other iOS devices it will still show graphically at 2:00 PM but it will have "(4:00 PM CST)" under it and if you open it up, it will actually BE at 4:00 PM CST. Then if you switch the time zone to PST, it will leave the appointment at 4:00 PM which is 2 hours later than you set it up for.

Most server equipment has its clock set to GMT, and that's why this usually shows up as the "GMT Bug." There are plenty of documented instances where users are experiencing the exact same problem, but their appointments get transposed to EST, or PST. In all cases, it is confirmed that the incorrect time zone (relative to what the user expects to see based on when they input their appointments) corresponds to the clock setting on the server that hosts their subscribed calendar account.

Here's a link to a great article on this:

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

It's from November last year..... Same bug still here.... In February 2015.

Here's a particularly pertinent quote from the article for the (inevitable) next person who shows up and tries to argue why Calendars are supposed to move your appointments to different times than you set them up for:

"Calendar events should display the time zone the event was created in as determined by the client software (Outlook or the settings on your mobile device) not the time zone in which the server is housed."

You didn't argue otherwise...but others (read previous posts) have gone to great lengths trying to explain to everyone why this isn't a bug, but how calendars are supposed to work. It obviously isn't, but apparently this is not obvious to everyone.

This article confirms reports that the GMT Bug is fixed as of iOS 8.2 Beta 5

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/ios-8-2-update-scheduled-release-march-ahead-apple-watc h-shipment-april-1486508

I think it should be pretty clear at this point that this was a bug, because Apple has now "fixed" it. If this was caused by something done by others outside of Apple, it could not be "fixed" in an iOS beta release.

As of this morning, seems like this is where we are at:

1. If you sync your devices using Google Calendar, you are good to go as of yesterday thanks to the back-end change implemented by Google.
2. If you sync using MS Exchange (and potentially other server types) you still have the GMT bug.
3. Multiple reports appear to confirm that the GMT Bug is fixed for EVERYONE as of iOS 8 Beta Release 5
4. iOS Beta Release 5 is expected out in March ahead of the Apple Watch release expected in April

If you are new to this forum (I expect a lot fewer new visitors now that Google did their fix), it is still helpful for you to submit a bug report to Apple. Here's the link:

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

Hang in there. I think the resolution is just over the horizon.

Google has just fixed this with a workaround on their end: http://www.forbes.com/sites/amitchowdhry/2015/02/04/gmt-bug-ios-8-google-calenda r/

It hasn't been fixed for Outlook users. The article states that it appears to be fixed in the upcoming iOS 8.2 per the developer notes.

1) I DID read the first and last 3 pages of posts before adding a comment, including all of that mess regarding resetting Exchange Calendars which I did not want to deal with. At that point I simply disabled Time Zone Override since I enabled it in the past and my solution worked for me on iPhone 6 iOS 8.1 (not 8.1.3) so I gave up reading the other 50 pages.

2) I did what I said I did and it worked for me and the issue was resolved for me, so I'm sharing it in the hopes it helps other people. I DISABLED Time Zone Override. Enabling it caused the GMT to show up for me and disabling it made it go away, which was the original problem I Googled that led me to this discussion. The ideas that have been "discussed to exhaustion" did not involve DISabling Time Zone Override.
3) Yes, get it off your chest, and then click unsubscribe if you're still following this discussion and you've tried everyone's suggestions including my own. You don't have to be a keyhole about it.

<Edited by Host>

Oooh, calendar freezing, that sounds really bad.
You are the first person i have read a post from who has one of the three problems i had, data not syncing. If i entered the data on iCal, it would sync to iPhone, but nothing i entered on iPhone would sync to iCal (or to iCloud of course).
(one problem, upon updating to OS8 was GMT showing up all over my calendar on the iPhone, another problem was that the Calendar would give me a 30 minute alert on every event, event though i set it as None and in Settings, it defaults to None, and the third problem was that my data entered on my iPhone wasn't syncing to anything, it was only on the phone, so no back up.)

It's been very buggy and crazy. i just listed the problems that happen consistently. There are others that happen sporadically.

The thing for me is that i only use the iPhone calendar, and occasionally i will use iCal if it's more handy.

I DO NOT use Google Calendar, or any other 3rd party calendar.

The reason i think i have had the GMT problem (and the other two) is because one of my Apple IDs (i have at least two) which is my main one that i use for everything except logging into iCloud, is a gmail.com email address. The iCloud email address is identical to the gmail one on the left side of the @. Maybe that confuses OS? all i can do it speculate.

Anyway, so because my main apple ID and my main email address have for years been the gmail user name and email address, i have always had that in my Calendar settings on the iPhone as my default calendar. I didn't know this until this GMT thing came up. I never knew there WAS a default calendar setting. In trouble shooting the GMT/30 minute alert/not syncing data problem, i learned that i have a default calendar setting and that in my case (not on everyone's iPhone but on mine at least) there are multiple possibilities for default Calendar. The top one, in the order they're presented, is iCloud. Under the heading, iCloud, it has a list of sub calendars, Finance, Family, Work, etc. Any one of those can be selected as default calendar. Or, the second heading is my gmail email address, and under that heading is my gmail user name (which is my actual name). It's the same as my iCloud user name, so again, maybe that confuses OS8.

Anyway, because i only use the Apple calendars and not Google Calendar or any other 3rd party calendar, i figured out that i don't need to have my gmail address set as my default calendar, although i would prefer to, but it really makes no difference that i can see. So, i created a generic name iCloud subcalendar (AllCloud) and set that as my default calendar. That immediately got rid of the three problems, unwanted GMT info, unwanted 30 minute alerts, and failure to sync. So i don't have any of that aggravation, but still want to know when the problem is fixed and also want to understand the problem better. I think it has something to do with iCloud and some change that was made with the OS8 code that has disconnected iCloud from gmail and Google and 3rd party Calendar programs which previously worked fine with iCloud.

I have asked this question before on this thread but haven't seen an answer, unless i missed it (so may posts, so little time). My question is, is there something superior about Google Calendar that would prevent people from switching their default calendar to an iCloud calendar, which would get rid of GMT info? I understand that some people have to use Outlook calendar related to work/their job. If not 3rd party calendar is not required, what are the reasons for staying with it, for people who suffer, some quite terribly, with these OS8 calendar problems?

I would like to ask what your default calendar setting looks like. My daughter has an iPhone and no 3rd party calendar. In her settings, there are only the iCloud calendars. I have what i described above.

I am wondering if people who use Google calendar as their default calendar (in the iPhone calendar settings) switched to an iCloud calendar for default, what would they lose? Would they lose all their Google calendar data? I mean, it would still be on Google Calendar, if entered there on the computer, but if entered on the phone, what would happen?

Sorry for your ordeal. I feel so fortunate that i don't use or need Google Calendar or another 3rd party calendar. I don't know the advantages of using Google calendar over using an iCloud calendar but there must be many for people to continue to live with these terrible problems caused by iOS 8.

i got a response notice for this thread in my email that arrived 10 minutes ago. At the bottom of the email it said "To post a reply, go to the discussion in Apple Support Communities." 'go to discussion' is hyperlinked. i clicked on it and got a message at the linked page that says "Unauthorized - Access to this place or content is restricted. If you think this is a mistake, please contact your administrator or the person who directed you here." The sender of the post (the email says) is JG in SB.

There's probably a good reason for this but i don't know. I clicked on something (can't find it now) that said this discussion was being branched into a new discussion. That makes sense. But the email shows the same thread title as this one. Beyond that, i'm unauthorized.

The post from JG in SB shown in the email said that iOS 8.2 has a lot of bug fixes, reported by BGR, and these are listed (quite a lot of them). One of the fixed bugs listed is 'a timezone issue where events appear in GMT'

Good news.

I "fixed" my GMT issue back in December by switching my default calendar from my google email user name (which is my main apple ID) to one of the iCloud calendars. I don't use a 3rd party calendar so this wasn't a big deal for me. Better than having the GMT mess all over my calendar.

I have periodically tested this by switching back to my google email user name and entering some test events. As recently as early February, i was still getting the GMT error (along with two other bug errors fixed by the same default calendar change), but when i tested it about a week ago, i didn't get GMT. i tested it again today. Still no GMT.

i was having two other apparently related bugs/errors that accompanied the GMT bug, one, every new event is given a 30 minute alert time, even if the event is set to 'none' for alert and in Settings, alert is set to none, and two, new events were not backing up to iCal or iCloud, no back of Calendar. When i stopped getting GMT, since a week or two ago, my new events back up in iCal--but still not iCloud.

The 30 minute alert has not been fixed. No way to get it to stop doing this.

I have not yet updated to iOS 8.1.3, but recently stopped having the GMT for unknown reasons and at least iCal is backing up my events entered on iPhone.
I don't know why or how this was fixed but it's gone--in advance of iOS 8.2. So i don't know what the relationship to the iOS is.