I am tired of simple math to determine the time, make it simple, gmail!

March 30, 2010 9:30 AM

Why will my GMail timestamp not change to reflect current timezone?

As a person who lives in two different timezones (PST/EST), I've never had any problems with GMail/Google accounts catching up immediately when I restart my computer, but this go-round from PST to EST, it is stuck in PST.

I've changed the time in my google settings countless times (including logging in and out about three dozen times) as well as physically changing it on my computer (MacBook) and restarting, and nothing will stick. Any suggestions? This is driving me crazy. Timestamps are accurate on my iPhone, but not correct when I pull it up on my browser, or a different browser in EST.

posted by banannafish to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Sounds like a cookies problem. There's no good way for a web application to determine the user's local timezone from the browser. (And boy, I wish there was.) So I suspect what Google is doing is storing your timezone in a browser cookie, perhaps in addition to in your server-side profile ... this would in theory make the timezone setting "stick" to a particular PC, so you could have one machine in PST and another in EST.

My only suggestions are to see whether your computers are set not to accept cookies, and then perhaps clear the Google cookies and allow them to reload.
posted by Kadin2048 at 10:15 AM on March 30, 2010 [1 favorite]

From Googling, it looks like you need to change your timezone in both your Gmail settings as well as your Google account settings.
posted by misterbrandt at 12:46 PM on March 30, 2010

This is driving me crazy too. I've been having the same problem on my MacBook since I last changed time zones in late Feb. I've tried deleting cookies, I've changed my time zone in my Google account settings and on my MacBook. It's still stuck in the previous time zone (GMT). This is the first time I've had this problem. I changed time zones in Jan and everything worked fine.

The weird thing is, the correct times show when I access the mobile version of GMail in Safari on my iPhone, but when I switch to the desktop version on the same browser, the times show up in GMT just like they do on my MacBook.
posted by ocha-no-mizu at 7:00 PM on March 30, 2010

Response by poster: I tried changing my timezones in both Gmail and Google as well as on my computer and attempted to delete my cookies and it is STILL NOT RIGHT. Oh man do I need to just give up? Hivemiiiiiiind help meeee.
posted by banannafish at 9:07 PM on March 30, 2010

I followed the above and still can't figure it out. Weird, that.
posted by ChurchHatesTucker at 6:28 PM on March 31, 2010

Response by poster: Okay, so just as an update, I randomly turned on my computer today and GMail is showing the accurate EST. Just in time for me to head back to PST. Awesome.
posted by banannafish at 9:39 AM on April 7, 2010