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[Comment deleted]

Bump

The lack of an easy-to-use UTC timezone is painful.  I cannot
imagine why it was not implemented from the beginning.  Implementing
it now should be the easiest thing in the world.

As a simplification of the suggested workaround:  Note that the
Africa/Abidjan (Ivory Coast) timezone uses UTC+0:00 and does not
observe daylight savings time.

I just found this app let me select a true UTC timezone on my Nexus 10 with Android 4.2. Just posting the workaround since I'm guessing nobody actually reads these suggestions we post here ... ;)
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.futurek.android.tzc

This issue holds true for Android 4.3 (the stock nexus 4 image).

I just bought this nexus7, noticed the annoyance immediately. I fully agree with takeo's comment.

Same result on Android 4.4 on Moto X, used TimeZone Changer from Google Play to work around it.

Wow, this was reported almost two years ago and it's still not fixed? I see several other requests to add UTC as a time zone option. This should be really easy to fix - what's taking so long?

To add to how ridiculous this issue is - Icelanders are affected as well as multiple other locations.

The closest I get is Azores - but they use DST which we do not and that applies to the following countries as well.

The following is a list of places that use UTC as their standard time and do not observe Daylight saving time:

West Africa[edit]
Burkina Faso
Côte d'Ivoire
The Gambia
Ghana
Guinea
Guinea-Bissau
Liberia
Mali
Mauritania
São Tomé and Príncipe
Senegal
Sierra Leone
Togo
Western Sahara
Atlantic Islands[edit]
Greenland
northeastern
Danmarkshavn and surrounding area
Iceland
Saint Helena, Ascension Island and Tristan da Cunha (to UK)
Antarctica[edit]
Some bases in Antarctica. See also Time in Antarctica

This thing is a complete mess.

There is a simple hack which can be applied: simply add Reykjavik time for Iceland which is UTC+00:00.

For example in the android menu there is:

Casablanca : GMT+0:00 : Western European Standard Time

1. Western European Standard Time doesn't exist. WEST is Western European Summer Time.

2. WEST = Western European Summer Time is UTC+01:00 , not UTC+00:00 nor GMT+0:00 as written in the android menu. WEST and UTC+00:00 are mutually exclusive.

3. GMT is an obsolete acronym. Please do not refer to GMT as all civil times refer to UTC which has been redefined in 1972 and has leap seconds.

In the android menu it is obvius that there is confusion about civil time definitions, which change their offset between UTC during the year by introduction of the summer time, and absolute UTC offsets. You can't put in the same menu item Casablanca local time, which is the legal time for Morocco, with WEST and GMT+0:00, because they are three separate concepts. The legal time in Morocco is defined as WET in winter and WEST in summer. WET is UTC+00:00 and WEST is UTC+01:00. GMT is not clearly defined at least since 1972.

Everything should be corrected, but:

There is a simple hack which can be applied: simply add Reykjavik time for Iceland which is UTC+00:00.

See #3 above: Africa/Abidjan uses UTC year-round.
This conveniently is the first name on the Android time zone list.

There is no Africa/Abidjan in nexus 7, only Azores and Casablanca.

As noted earlier "This thing is a complete mess" which is true it's also pathetic this problem has not been solved long ago.  I have an AT&T Galaxy S4-there is no Reykjavik and it turns out that the closest to UTC is the Azores that it is only on UTC during the Summer. Anything less than having a direct UTC time available somewhere doesn't work in my mind.  This is really a crazy situation considering that there are also GPS/GNSS time floating around in the system when GPS/GNSS fixed and directly shows in EXIF data tagged to a picture.

The bouncing TZs make life really difficult when trying to correlate times between a GPS/GNSS logger and cameras without GPS.

Seriously Google, this is holding Android back in several industries including aviation, medicine/healthcare, military, astronomy, and other sciences.  It's really kind of embarrassing that a Linux-based OS cannot show the time using the time zone that it uses internally to keep time.  I will continue to site this as one of Android most serious warts in social media and encourage others to do the same until it is fixed.

Whilst GMT is no longer formally defined, it is still in widespread colloquial use to refer to UTC (whilst wikipedia currently claims that GMT is sometimes intended to mean British Summer Time - this is certainly something I've never come across).

Additionally 'Zulu' is the official way of referring to UTC worldwide in aviation.

In the interests of usability, I suggest that when adding UTC to the timezone selection list in the Android clock (and preferences), that all three options are added to the list:

UTC
Zulu (UTC)
GMT (UTC)

... as different users are likely to look for all three.

GMT is deprecated. Using GMT today is wrong.

I also used the TimeZone Changer app with success (thanks BTW!). But it's a shame that UTC/Zulu is simply not an option in TZ selection.

This morning I woke up a little early at 13:45 -- or so I thought. It was actually 14:45 and I was waking up late thanks to the Azores going into daylight savings.

I'm not sure why Android doesn't support the full Olson database, or at least the portions of it that are still extant, or if nothing else most of the contents of /usr/share/zoneinfo. Is it a localization problem? Did someone have to vet the items individually and erred on the side of excluding values?

As a workaround, I recommend the Accra timezone.
The last time I checked (a few minutes ago),
it was still UTC+0 year-round.

Accra is not in vanilla Android, at least to version 4.4.4. Since it seems nobody cares to correct this issue, you must install TimeZone Changer app.

I would like to add my voice to those requesting a UTC entry in the list of available times. I work in aviation, and run on UTC.  I currently use Reykjavik as a work around, but that seems a bit of a bodge.

Most modern computing devices store UTC internally and convert on display, including Android.  Whatever politics have kept this from being included, there must be some because the issue so obviously stupid, is blinding a rational decision.  There are so many reasons to have a UTC clock, here's one: much scientific data is recorded in UTC.

This is still an outstanding issue and should not have been marked obsolete. Lollipop should but still does not include an entry for Coordinated Universal Time.

Please re-open this bug or provide a link to the commit that fixes this embarrassing problem.

This is not obsolete and it is still an issue.
It's a pity but I think that Google decided not to fix it.

Oh God; how is this an issue!? How has this been an issue for so long? I was blown away to discover that this wasn't an issue particular to my device, but inherent in Android. This is embarrassing. How am I supposed to show my face around non-Android users? How can I honestly claim Android to be superior to anything?

This is actually exactly what I use in Iceland to poke fun at Android users.  For most tablets you can simply ask, can you tell me what time it is on your device?

The answer is often hilarious, but usually just sad for Google.

Not Obsolete - REOPEN

BUMP. Come on, guys, about time to get the UTC time on Android clocks. It's a must-have in aviation, maritime, and military.

Good morning,
sorry not sure if this can be solved but on Android 5.0.2, GMT+11 does not exist. There is at least New-Caledonia and Vanuatu using this time zone. Is this time zone can be added on next update ? Thanks. Pascal.

It's clear that Android developers are not interested in correcting this issue, to circumvent it install TimeZone Changer app.

I tried to wake up someone opening new issue 36949180 about this.

Odd that such an issue has been pretty much ignored. Obviously UTC (GMT/Etc, whatever) is important to a lot of people. It is a standard time often used when creating cross-zone, global conference calls and such.

Why would a project member mark this as obsolete and why wouldn't any project member at lest tell us why they won't address this issue?

No time zone GMT+11 without DST is very annoying. All my syncs are wrong by 1 hour during Vladivostok daylight saving.

Frustrated

Internal bug 36949180

Maintainer please update the status from Enhancement to BUG.  It's a BUG.

This lack of UTC is a real mess. Please add the UTC choice in the time zone.

Please add UTC as optional time zone. The user shouldn't have to resort to installing an app to adjust the timezone in their Nexus phone.

Please fix urgently. This bug is very annoying.

Problems the lack of a UTC timezone creates.

Unable to use UTC for dual-clock as the zone doesn't exist.
Unable to set Amateur Radio events (world-wide events) using UTC in calendar apps on device without first converting to the local time & date.
Unable to properly set events, timers, alarms, or schedule items with voice recognition using "Zulu", "GMT", "UTC", or "Universal Time"

Just tossing that out there if you need things to test.

Agree that a fix is needed and that UTC is popular (even necessary) in certain professions. Since nothing has been done in 3 years, I will share a workaround: There is a "Galaxy Time Zone Fix" app in the Play store which I have found works on stock Android and can set it to UTC. Make sure you disable "Automatic time zone" on the system before setting the time zone in the app.

UTC please! :D

Really useful for scientists and researchers, especially astronomers. Please!!!!

One more place for the list where UTC is used: the International Space Station.

UTC please.

We use it on all of our servers at work, so it's useful to have the two times side by side on my phone. Kind of ridiculous that the software engineers who wrote Android didn't include it.

All the aviation world (pilots, ATC, mechanics,....) use UTC !

The lack of UTC time : The first tablet in ISS is... an Ipad !

http://www.spaceflight101.net/first-tablet-based-launch-checklist-debuts-aboard-soyuz-spacecraft.html

GMT is the official UK winter time as far as I know, so it's not obsolete. It becomes BST in the summer time. This all happens on Linux when you set your timezone to London/Europe. As far as I remember there are some technical differences between GMT and UTC too.

It's true that GMT is the official UK winter time, but that's it. It should not be used as a base to express time zone offsets. For example CEST is UTC+2, it should not be written as GMT+2 (as Android currently does).

We recently got an update of the Clock app, but still no UTC. Kind of ridiculous.

It's false that GMT is the official UK winter time. GMT is not clearly defined and has been superceded by UTC which is the Coordinated Universal Time and is kept by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures offsetting International Atomic Time with leap seconds. So the official UK winter time is UTC, because UTC is the Coordinated Universal Time. The official times of all the countries of the world are based on UTC, because UTC is the Coordinated Universal Time. Network Time Protocol (NTP) distributes UTC over The Internet, because UTC is the Coordinated Universal Time. Android must have UTC, because UTC is the Coordinated Universal Time.

As far as I know, GMT is still the official name of the UK winter time, and I don't see any problem of definition (apart from the fact that the name GMT was sometimes used for what is UT). For the rest, I agree.

I'll add that UTC superseded GMT in 1972, so maybe it's time for Android to catch up.

As the UK is on planet Earth and is part of the major scientific institutions such as the International Astronomical Union and the standard organisations such as the International Telecommunication Union, the UK legal framework adopted the Coordinated Universal Time as defined by the ITU, like all the other countries of the world. GMT is no more defined in the terms of precision required by today technical applications and even if for many UK citizens the concepts of universality and change are strange, the UK law adopted anyway the UTC instead of the obsolete GMT. Everybody is still free to stick a gnomon along the Greenwich meridian and watch the shadow to have a good approximation of GMT, anyway using the Coordinated Universal Time has been seen as more appropriated by the UK legislation so the official time of the UK is defined on UTC.

For similar practical considerations is necessary that UTC is added to the standard Android time choices.

For astronomical purposes, I would like to be able to set a clock at UTC+0.0 hrs

Currently a workaround is to select Reykjavik city as the timezone. But this is not ideal. For example, what if Iceland decides to observe summer time at some time in the future?

It would be more intuitive if the offset from UTC could be entered explicitly.

send me the TZ datafile and ill edit it for you. you check it in and take credit..easy fix.. this is way to simple to not have fixed yet..

I reported the GMT+11 missing timezone for New Caledonia I year ago.. I think that Google is not very interested by this issue.

Four years on and no UTC?

BUMP!!

Is it possible that Google is campaigning with the UN to remove UTC from the standard clocks and rename it Universal Google Time? Fine by me. Just do something please!

I need UTC time on my phone. Please set it up as one of the selectable time zones.

For my phone rooted phone, I could set UTC by typing as root in the terminal (or adb shell):
setprop persist.sys.timezone "UTC"
then restart the phone. Now "GMT+00:00 UTC" appears under "Select time zone" in Date & Time, despite the fact that it can't be selected from the options in the list.

It's bad that it has to come to it.

Please fix this bug

How is this new? From 4 years ago?

And one setting is all that's needed to get the functionality in place too? (Thanks for the tip #66 - I'll try that).

I do also support the idea of moving from GMT to UTC naming.

But this can't be that hard... Why hasn't it been done? Has no one submitted a patch? Have patches been rejected?

"
- Add "Coordinated Universal Time" to the list of selectable time zones. This would be a new international time zone that is not affected by daylight saving offsets.

- Replace "GMT" with "UTC" in time zone offset descriptions.
"

I second this!

Please add support for this feature.  As an IT professional and amature radio operator, I use zulu time frequently.  Finding a place that is GMT0 that does not elect to do a summer shift is difficult at best.

Hi, everyone

I've been working in West Africa since 2011. I remember in the past being able to pick Reykjavik from the list and it worked out well. It's no longer available and it's always a bit messy to get the time right. I remember manually changing the time a few months ago, throwing the Fitbit app in disarray, becoming unable to sync with the devices and their servers because of the time not matching. Took me a while to understand what the issue was.

The app that someone mentioned above solved the issue for me: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.futurek.android.tzc

Funny enough, the app changes the phone to the right timezone (currently Nouakchott, Mauritania), the phone settings show that as the timezone, but if I click on the settings to pick a new timezone the current one is still not listed. For some reason the app forces it onto the OS without adding it.

It works and that's what matters. But it's puzzling how this issue has been going on for such a long time and through so many Android versions.

Dear Google, please address this issue.

(It's funny though, one of my phones at least has several UTC+0 cities as time zone choices, while another phone only has Azures and not even Reykjavik. Both phones are on android 7.)

How this is marked as a feature request and not an urgent and serious bug baffles me.  This should be fixed on all versions of Android that are getting security updates.

I would like to suggest we hold a 5 year anniversary party for this bug in Reykjavík on the 30th of October.  Starts at 8pm or 9pm - depending if you have an Android or IOS device.

Version 5.2 of the clock app lets you add any city's time zone ... Still doesn't include UTC 😒

What about SYSTEM TIME?

On Wed, 22 Nov 2017, 15:30 , <buganizer-system@google.com> wrote:

Reverse survey. This one is for Google to answer?

Google... how would you describe this bug/feature request and the five other associated reports?
1. We don't have bugs, it's all features.
2. Does anybody really know what time it is?
3. We don't have time for this.
4. We are buying and retiring all time zones and will deploy Google Standard Time in version 6.
5. Quit bothering us.
6. Resistance is futile.
7. Nobody over 18 is available to answer at this time.
8. We don't think UTC is cool.
9. Other... (please specify)

That's fantastic!

On Wed, Nov 22, 2017 at 10:22 AM, <buganizer-system@google.com> wrote:

--
Stefan Buller

Bump

A decent solution to the UTC issue would also include the possibility to use UTC, or any other time zone, without loosing the feature of the automatic time sync with Internet time. At present ( Marschmallow ) the automatic sync is supported only together with automatic time zone selection. This is a nonsense, since Internet time IS INTRINSICALLY UTC. I have installed a special application named "Galaxy Time Zone Fix" on my Samsung S7. I am now able to select UTC, but I am forced to take care of manually syncing my time with UTC at least once in a month. I do not understand why a Linux based system as Android does not allow a normal user to rely on the Linux excellent time management software. I will probably choose to root the device only to fix this bloody UTC issue. I would have already done so if rooting did not imply the expiration of  the Samsung Warranty.

I'm not sure about the history or how different OEMs alter this, but automatic time zone selection and automatic time selection options have been separate on stock Android for (at least) the last several releases.

The developer preview for the Android P release contains an improved time zone picker which enables the selection of UTC (along with several other improvements for various countries around the world). Since that feature is currently experimental there's no guarantee that this picker will make the final release but I am personally optimistic. I have also added UTC to the old picker list just in case. One way or the other, the selection of UTC should therefore be supported on stock Android from the P release onward.

This is terrific news! Looking forward to rooting all my devices to upgrade
to Android P as soon as it's available!

Thank you for finally addressing this issue.

- Derek

On Mon, Mar 19, 2018, 02:47 <buganizer-system@google.com> wrote:

Now that Android P is released, I'm disappointed to report that, despite having a spiffy new time zone picker, neither GMT nor UTC are available through it.

I've just been using Freetown, Sierra Leone, since I _think_ that city sticks with UTC all year round.

Sad

On Tue, Aug 7, 2018, 16:22 <buganizer-system@google.com> wrote:

--

Typed on my phone, please excuse the probable typos.

Can the status be corrected? This evidently is not fixed.

I'm not sure what happen between preview and final release that this was dropped, probably due to responding to UX feedback. Reopening.

Neil, it seems like the Sierra Leone workaround is correct at least at the moment?

This if fixed but the UX is hard to figure out. In the "Select Time Zone" menu, the expanded menu ("three dots" ) lets you select zones by UTC offset, and "Coordinated Universal Time" is the first option on that list.

Not sure which "'Select Time Zone' menu" is referred to in comment #84. In Clock>World Time (which is where I for one would like this), the expanded menu offers just "Send Feedback" and "Help". Android 9 PPR1.180610.009, Clock 5.3 (207178266).

in the Settings apps, choose System > Date & time, then turn off "Automatic time zone". that will enable "Select time zone", and on *that* page there are three dots in the top right corner. Choose "Select by UTC offset" on that menu, and "Coordinated Universal Time GMT+00:00" is the top entry in the list.

Nope.

If this is truly fixed in any version of android you'll have to also mark the version this was first fixed in.

In *Android Pie*, in the Settings apps, choose System > Date & time, then turn off "Automatic time zone". that will enable "Select time zone", and on *that* page there are three dots in the top right corner. Choose "Select by UTC offset" on that menu, and "Coordinated Universal Time GMT+00:00" is the top entry in the list.

Maybe 36950167 (Clock app settings) needs to be resurrected - and this issue should be clarified.

It should be possible to add Coordinated Universal Time to the Clock app "World Time" list and thus the clock app display.

I (personally) don't care if UCT is a System time option. I want my local clock to show local time.

As of 2019-10-05 (maybe earlier?), "UTC" is an option in the city list of the Clock app.
(Clock 6.2 (259367952), Android 10 QP1A.191005.007.A1).
Thanks!