Mac OS X - Terminal commands for changing time zones in the machine

changing_time_zones.sh

# Useful for testing things that are time zone
# sensitive - like scheduling things

# Get current timezone
sudo systemsetup -gettimezone

# Get list of available timezones
sudo systemsetup -listtimezones

# Set the timezone to the selected timezone
# sudo systemsetup -settimezone <timezone>
sudo systemsetup -settimezone America/New_York 
sudo systemsetup -settimezone Europe/Paris 

Hi @holdfast-m,

Yes, I'm alive and well, thank you for your concern 👍

That's not something I've done or familiar with, but here are some pointers you could look deeper into:

• Look into this other Gist thread, they seem to set it to the UTC through symlink.
  The thing you will have to look more into detail here is how to set the -12 part and such from UTC-12
  Set Time zone in OSX to UTC

• Setting it to GMT (which is similar to UTC)

sudo systemsetup -settimezone GMT

• If you have internet access you can look into set the time server:

# Displays whether network time is on or off.
# Network Time: On
sudo systemsetup -getusingnetworktime

# Displays the currently set network time server.
# Network Time Server: time.apple.com
sudo systemsetup -getnetworktimeserver

# Sets whether using network time is on or off.
sudo systemsetup -setusingnetworktime on

# Use this command to designate a network time server.  Enter the IP address or DNS name for the network time server.
sudo systemsetup -setnetworktimeserver timeserver

I hope this helps

If you find the proper solutions please let me know.

Thanks!
Looks like the only way is to have a list all the cities with time zone mark in front of each city, or at least witn minimum 24+ with daylight saving time info.
Online update from internet will not help, because sometimes we have different timezone with does not matching with ship's position (longitude) so automatic GPS timezone also will not match. The only way is to change timezone manually.
Apple does not support such commands like ... "-settimezone GMT-08", or similar variations, because it is not from the "list".
Having MAC makes me crazy:) but that's new experience:)
All the best to You! Stay healthy!

Damn, thanks for this. I'm fairly new to MacOS and damn sheeeet changing the timezone makes me want to punch the Apple devs in their throats!

Anyway... Changing timezone in Windows was easy peasy like I live in GMT+8, I just need to select that. Then when working at night, I can just change it to PST (New York timezone). But in MacOS, "closest city"?! Where?! damn!

Sorry, rant over!

I am a Seaman and right now we are UTC-11, I am using Apia with UTC+13, because there is no city with -11, also there is no city with UTC-9 (Honolulu -10, Anchorage -8), we will have utc-9 in 4 days, I do not want to "modify" time, only change time zone. And there is no "nearest city" in the middle of Pacific Ocean :)

Hi @holdfast-m,

I did a quick check for the UTC-X time zones:

• UTC-11 : Pacific/Niue - See: Pacific/Niue - UTC-11
• UTC-9 : Pacific/Gambier - See: Pacific/Gambier - UTC-9

Overall, you could search in Google for a region with UTC-X in time zone, and then use the name to grep on the list of available time zones:

sudo systemsetup -listtimezones | grep -Ei "honolulu|anchorage|niue|samoa|alaska|gambier"

 America/Anchorage
 Pacific/Gambier
 Pacific/Honolulu
 Pacific/Niue

Note:

• I haven't found how to correlate directly UTC-X to the list given by sudo systemsetup -listtimezones output, without querying external sources like Google yet.

Good morning ddre54
No, there will be nolist by UTC... only google and manual check-out will give you the list but there exist DST (summer time) which is also linked to the city... so at winter it can be different timezone:)
When you set time like this (from terminal) for cities which not listed in common list (check "world time" section where you can add extra clock) and after you go to settings - date and time, you can see that the timezone city is Head office California (do not remember exactly) and you will not be able to change the timezone any more from settings window, only from terminal. You will be able to change it again by setting "approved list" city from terminal, then list from "settings window" will be restored back to normal.
But what to do with iphone or ipad? Over there I am not able to "cheat" like on mac🤔
"I have a dream" (C) that one day Apple will fix that🤓

Thank U! It's work for me.