Current Time

The clock in a phone or a laptop drifts a little every day, and it only corrects itself when it next checks in with a time server, which some devices do rarely and some not at all. So this page does not simply print your device’s time. It asks the server what time it is, measures how long the question and the answer took to travel, and allows for that travel time to work out how far your device’s clock is ahead or behind.

The clock you see is your device’s clock with that difference taken out, and the page tells you the difference itself, so you know whether the clock in the corner of your screen can be trusted. Servers keep their clocks in step with network time sources as a matter of course, which makes the server a far steadier reference than a device left to itself. The remaining uncertainty comes from the network: a steady connection gives a closer figure than a busy one.

The page asks several times and trusts the quickest exchanges, then shows the margin that remains beside the result. It measures again every ten minutes while it stays open, whenever you come back to the tab, and as soon as it notices that your device’s clock has been changed.

The time is shown in the time zone your device is set to, with the name of that zone and its offset from Coordinated Universal Time. Daylight saving time is applied by the rules your browser holds for that zone, so the clock moves forward or back on the right night without anyone having to change it. The page also says whether daylight saving time is in effect now, and on which date, at what time and to what time the clocks next change.

If the time zone shown is not the one you are in, the setting on your device is wrong, and the fix is in its date and time settings. To see the time somewhere else, the time zone converter shows any place alongside your own, and handles the dates when two places change their clocks on different days.

Switch to fullscreen and the time fills the display with nothing else on it, in large digits that can be read across a room: on a classroom board, beside a live stream, on a second monitor, or on a tablet left on a desk. The page keeps correcting itself while it is open, so a clock left running all day stays right, and while it is fullscreen it asks the device to keep the screen on, where the browser allows that.

For a count toward a particular time rather than the time itself, the pages that count down to common clock times are linked below, and the countdown tool counts to any date. The alarm clock plays a sound at a time you choose, and the week number page gives today’s week of the year.

Under your own time, the page lists the time in each of the country’s time zones and in major cities around the world, each with how many hours it is ahead of or behind the time above. Select any of them and it takes over the large display, fullscreen included, until you go back to your own.

The clock follows the 12-hour or 24-hour format usual in your language, and a switch changes it; the choice is kept on this device and the other tools use it too. Beside the date sit today’s ISO week number and the day of the year. The seconds can be hidden for a calmer display, and that choice is kept on this device as well.