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

Dave, I would love to try your fix, but for some reason setting up a google calendar using the Exchange option on the iPhone and iPad isn't working for me.

I am able to delete my google calendar from the phone, and then follow your directions, setting it up anew as an exchange account.  And, when I finish setting it up, the account verifies itself.  (The little checkmarks momentarily appear, indicating that the password is correct, etc.)

Once I do that, if I go to Settings/Mail,Contacts,Calendars, I see my gmail account listed in the list of accounts, and Mail, Calendars and Reminders are all selected.  Mail days to sync is listed as 1 week.  In advanced settings, "Use SSL" is selected.  S/MIME is not.

So all seems to be in order.  But when I go to Calendar, and select "Calendars" at the bottom of the page, the google calendar is not in the list.  And, my calendar is not populating with events from the google calendar.

Any idea what my problem might be?  I'm running IOS 8.1.1, it's an Iphone 6, and I use Exchange for my work email on it just fine.  Same result with the iPad.

I suspect that your solution may work only for Google Apps for Work, Education, and Government users.

Are you a Google Apps user? My company is set up with Google Apps (now "Google Apps for Work", I believe) and setting it up the same way you described works perfectly for me. I think there may be an issue IF you are setting up just a Gmail calendar and not setting up an Exchange account through Google Apps. If you are forced to use the Google set up choice on your iPhone 6, and cannot use the Exchange option, there will probably still be an issue. No doubt this is an iOS8 issue, because if I set up the account using the Google option, I also get the GMT thing.

One more thing to try...

Switch OFF Google Calendar sync on your iPhone 6 in the GOOGLE account you just set up, or DELETE the Google calendar account you have setup now.  Then, set up a NEW calendar account in this manner:

1. Go to "Settings"
2. Go to "Mail, Contacts, Calendars"
3. Tap "Add Account..."
4. Tap "Other"
5. Tap "Add CalDAV Account"
6. Fill in the details:
   1. Server is www.google.com
   2. User Name is your Google Account username
   3. Password is your Google Account password
   4. Description is whatever you want
7. Tap "Next"
8. Done!

See if your Google Calendar syncs properly at this point. It SHOULD! Hopefully, this will work for the Non-Google Apps users. I have not tried this method, but it is all I can think of besides, Apple, Apple, Apple...

I am not a Google Apps user.  I suspect, as I mentioned, that your solution only works for Google Apps users.

The CalDAV option doesn't work for me (and won't work for anyone, I'll bet) because, in fact, CalDAV is what the "Gmail" option uses.  The bug is in CalDAV, which is why connecting using the Gmail option exhibits the bug.

Ok.  I heard back from my Exchange host this morning.  They are still working on this issue with Apple....but Apple has apparently now acknowledged the bug in writing:

"Thank you for calling in so we may add to impact on issue with Exchange accounts and calendars on ios 8. Apple is aware of this and currently being worked on.  Please keep up with updates or call in fr any status on your RTA."

Apple has also told us that they have multiple examples of the this issue, even with time zone override turned off, and that it is specific to iOS 8.

The above is the somewhat good news.  The bad news is that Apple claims the "reported impact is minimal."  Thgis means that if you want to get this fixed, the best thing to do is to actually call in to Apple and report this is you are experiencing it.  Otherwise it may never get fixed....or not for a long time.

Also, I highly encourage you to report this bug to online tech news sites so they will pick up on it.  Here are links to the "tip" pages for several of them:

9to5mac.com
http://9to5mac.com/contact/

appleinsider.com

http://appleinsider.com/submit_story/

cultofmac.com

http://www.cultofmac.com/    (This is the home page.  "Send Tip" link is at far right at top of page.  It generates an E-mail)

Direct E-mail for tips news@cultofmac.com

Gizmodo.com

Send E-mail to tipbox@gizmodo.com

Describe the bug, and reference this discussion thread...and that it has had over 22k views as of now...which indicates this is a widespread issue that a lot of people are searching for and finding the thread as a search result.

If even one online tech news reports on this you can guarantee this will get fixed sooner than later.  If a tech site sees multiple "tips" about this they will investigate it.

I have an open case with an Apple senior tech right now on this issue.  I do not use Google.  I'm using Exchange via Office365, Outlook in a PC environment and Exchange calendars are synced with my iPhone 6+, iPad Air and other Apple laptops.  All iOS devices are exhibiting the same problems since the iOS 8 release.

All calendar events created within Outlook are displaying just fine across all platforms however any new calendar events created on either my iPad or my iPhone also display GMT time as well as Pacific time (my time zone).  If I try to edit these events, they only show the GMT time.  (I do have time zone override turned off.)

The technician I'm working with suggested that this is expected behavior and actually a "feature" of iOS 8 that the engineers had built in to accommodate business travelers who need to view their events both in local as well as their home time zone.

I have verified my account settings on Office 365 and I have the correct time zone selected/saved.  It's sounding like Apple is implying that when the calendar events that are created on iOS devices sync back to the server, they are incorrectly seeing the default time zone as GMT.  So the feature that they tried to implement most likely was not properly tested which is resulting in all of us having the same issue.  I will be sure to report any progress I'm able to make with Apple.  Hope this is fixed soon!

Sandy

I am having this issue but it's a bit different than Sandy's. I use Outlook 20120 and Google Calendar. I sync the two to my iOS devices with gSyncit. If I create a calendar entry on my Outlook calendar, it shows fine there. But when it syncs thru to Google to my iOS devices, I have the GMT time entry showing in the box and it's the only time zone option if I go to edit one of these.

On the other hand, if I create the calendar entry on one of my iOS devices, or if I create it in Google Calendar online, and then sync it to Outlook, everything looks as it should. There is no GMT showing and the time zone if I try to edit the entry on my iOS device is the Eastern Time Zone (which it should be for me).

So creating an entry in Outlook and then syncing to Google Calendar creates the GMT problem on my iOS devices (the GMT does not show up in Google Calendar, BTW).

Creating the calender entry in Google Calender online or in my iOS devices, does not appear to create the GMT problem on my iOS devices.

So it seems something happens when the appointment data is going from Google Calender to iOS to add the GMT stuff.

this actually just started happening and it's really a pain in the butt. Has anyone tried a full restore, set up as a new phone to see if it solves the problem?

I only know of a few steps to check:

• Settings - General - Date & Time - Set Automatically (On) - Time Zone (automatically changes to closest or farthest city in the zone)
• Settings - Mail/Contacts/Calendars - Time Zone Override (Off)
• GMail - Calendar.Google.Com - Settings (gear icon) - Settings - Time Zone (Your correct Time Zone)
• iCloud - Settings - Time Zone (correct time zone)
• iCloud Calendar - Settings (gear icon bottom left) - Advanced - Time Zone Support (Off)
• Check all Events you saved and make sure there's no Time Zone set at all

And disable using local transfer to iCal in iTunes and any other application you are using. Use the Cloud Server instead. Google and iCloud have Cloud Support for the iOS, Mac, and PC.

Joe, thank you for the detailed reply. All the settings look correct. Just so you can understand here are some screen shots of what happens when my appointments created in Outlook get synced to iOS 8.1.1 Calendar. The entry shows up in the correct slot on the calendar but if I try to edit the appointment, I can't change the time zone from GMT. The appointment shows the correct time zone in Outlook and on Google Calender so something is happening to change to the GMT time zone on iOS. Any other suggestions would be appreciated. BTW, I never used iCloud to sync as it required me to create a new, non-default calender in Outlook and that doesn't work for me. Google allowed me to sync my default Outlook calendar.

@Gator5000e:  No, a full factory restore does not fix this issue.  I tried that a few weeks ago as part of my extensive efforts to "prove" to Apple that this is a bug in their software.  I even did factory restores on all my iOS devices because they said "maybe it's being generated by someone else's software on the other device....couldn't be an Apple problem." Of course now they have acknowledged it IS an Apple problem.  A restore won't resolve this because the code that generates it is baked in to iOS8. So you will just be putting back the faulty code when you restore the device.  If you could restore back to iOS7, that would fix the issue...but alas, Apple prohibits any of us from doing that.  We have to live with this bug until they fix it.

Thanks, JG. Saved me a bunch of work. When I get home tonight, I will set up a calendar sync on my iPhone 4 that is still on iOS 7 and see what happens. That would be pretty definitive proof of the bug if those calendar entries are correct.

You are welcome.  FWIW most of us have the exact opposite of the issue that you have....we create appointments in Exchange, Google etc. and those sync just fine to the iOS devices, but if created and/or edited on an iOS device, they show up with the GMT time on other iOS devices but not in Exchange, Google etc.  A few others have reported what you are experiencing.  This is demonstrated in a YouTube video I did:

http://youtu.be/cgP1zyi_iV8

After many of hours and work on this with my Exchange host and trying out various setups, we are near 100% certain that the issue creating both expressions of this bug is related to the "Time Zone Override" feature in iOS.  Turning that on or off doesn't fix anything, or even change anything.  But we believe that the code for this feature basically reconciles the time for any event that is created against GMT as a "fixed reference" time zone.  iOS devices create some sort of data tag on the events and it is the way this tag is being interpreted by iOS8 and/or your subscribed calendars that results in the expression of the bug.  If this were working correctly....as it did in iOS7, we would never see the GMT info and events would not be transposed into it.

When you do your test later with iOS7, it would be awesome if you could do the following and report back:

1) Create an appointment on your iOS 7.x iPhone and see how it syncs to your subscribed calendar.

2) Create an appointment on your subscribed calendar (Google etc.) and see how it syncs onto the iOS 7.x iPhone.

3) Check how both of the above have synced over to your other iOS device that is running iOS 8.1.1

4) Create an appointment on your iOS 8.1.1 device and see how it syncs over on the iOS 7.x iPhone

I am near certain that you are not going to see this bug expressed on your iOS 7.x device.  My prediction is that....since your situation is flipped from mine....you will create an appointment in Google and the very same appointment will look perfectly correct on the iOS 7.x device and it will transpose to GMT on your iOS 8.x devices.

Also, I have no idea what gSyncIt is.  But I also speculate that if, instead of using that to sync, you directly subscribe to your Google Calendar using the native service in iOS, that you will see this situation reverse:  events created on iOS devices will transpose to GMT on other iOS devices, but events created directly in the subscribed calendar will not show as GMT on the iOS devices until they are edited/modified on an iOS device.  If you have the time/inclination to test that out I'd love to hear the results so I can share these with AppRiver and Apple.  AppRiver is my host and is working directly with top-level engineering support at Apple on this, so I like to funnel them any information I can.

I will try all that with my iPhone 4 and report back. gSyncit is a program that syncs my Outlook default calender with my Google Calender. It works really well. that way I can keep my calender in Outlook and also on my iDevices.

JG, as you suspected when I set up the sync to Google Calendar on my iphone 4 running iOS 7, it worked fine and did not exhibit the GMT bug. The same test appointment had the GMT bug on both my iOS 8 devices. Hopefully Apple will get this fixed quickly. Hope this helps.

Unfortunately iOS 8.1.2 which pushed to devices this morning does not appear to fix this bug.  Maybe the next one???

I guess I would be very surprised to see any kind of fix from Apple on this issue. Hopefully I am wrong.