Enable Time Zone Support in Calendar App for Mac OS X

The Calendar (once called iCal) app of Mac OS X has full support for Time Zones for the entire calendar, individual events, shared calendars, and even invitations, but it must be enabled separately within the preferences. If you rely on Calendar app for just about anything and travel or work across time zones with any regularity, this is a worthwhile feature to turn on, particularly for those who also sync the calendars between OS X and iOS.

Here is how to activate time zone support in Calendar for the Mac:

• Pull down the “Calendar” menu and choose Preferences


• Click on “Advanced” and check the box for “Turn on time zone support” then close out of Preferences

You will find the current Time Zone now visible in the upper right corner of the Calendar window, which is actually a pulldown menu where you can adjust the time zone for the calendar if needed.

Do note that all existing events will now be associated with the default active Time Zone, unless specified otherwise universally this way, or set individually as we’ll cover in a moment.

It’s a good idea to have the general system-wide Time Zone detection feature enabled if you’re going to use this feature, that way the Mac will automatically change itself to the current locations time zone when it has detected a change. OS X usually has this turned on by default, but you can double check in System Preferences > Date & Time > Time Zone > to be sure that “Set time zone automatically using current location” is turned on.

Setting the Time Zone for Specific Events in Calendar App

Turning on Time Zone support also allows you to set a time zone for specific events that are either created in or contained within Calendar app:

• Create or edit an event as usual


• Pull down the newly accessible “time zone” submenu to select the time zone for the event, then click Done

Any events with unique time zones set will sync across to iOS devices that are configured with the same Apple ID and iCloud account. Because the iPhone is typically always connected to the internet through cellular connections, it will adjust the time automatically to changes in location, and the Calendar events with zones set will reflect that.

This trick works the same in OS X Mavericks, Mountain Lion, or Lion, and syncs across to all versions of iOS that support iCloud.