How to Use WorldTimeBuddy to Convert Times and Schedule a Meeting Across Time Zones

Updated

WorldTimeBuddy (WTB) is a free web-based world clock and time zone converter that lets you compare multiple cities at once, then pick and share a meeting time. It works best when you need to find an hour that falls inside the working day for several people in different zones. The core workflow is three steps: add your locations, hover the hour grid to read the conversions, then click the hour tiles you want and share the selection. You need JavaScript enabled in your browser for the page to work.

Add your locations

The converter starts with a set of cities already loaded (for example New York, Buenos Aires, and London in the default view). You control the list:

  • Add a location by searching for a city and selecting it.
  • Remove a location you no longer need.
  • Set home to mark your own time zone as the reference point.
  • Order the rows so the people or offices you care about sit next to each other.

Each row shows the city, its zone label (such as EDT, GMT-3, or BST), and the current time. The default view uses a 12-hour clock with am/pm, and there is a 24 option to switch to a 24-hour clock if that matches how you or your colleagues read times.

Convert times by hovering

Once your locations are in place, you don't need to calculate anything. Move your mouse over any hour in the grid and the corresponding time in every other row updates at a glance. This is the fastest way to answer "if it's 3 pm here, what time is it there?"

Two settings help you read the grid accurately:

  • Show Timezones keeps the zone labels visible so you don't confuse a city's local time with its offset.
  • Mark Weekends shades Saturday and Sunday columns, which matters when you're scheduling across regions where the weekend falls on different days.

The grid also marks day boundaries. In the default view, New York and Buenos Aires share the same date while London is already on the next day, shown by the +1 and Thu Oct 8 labels. Watch for these shifts when a proposed time sits near midnight in any location.

Select a time and schedule it

Clicking an hour tile is what turns a conversion into a scheduled event:

  1. Click the hour tile that works for the most people. The selection is highlighted across all rows, so you can immediately see what that moment means in each zone.
  2. Review the selection against working hours. A time that is convenient in one city may land at 2 am in another; the highlighted row makes this visible before you commit.
  3. Share the selection using the available export options. The page offers Outlook / iCal, Google Calendar, Clipboard, Gmail, and Link to this selection, plus an Event option to build the event itself.

If you want to keep your setup for next time, Sign in to save settings — the page states this is free. You can sign in with Facebook or with email.

A practical example

Suppose you're in New York and need a call with colleagues in Buenos Aires and London. You add all three cities and set New York as home. Hovering across the afternoon, you notice that when it's 12:15 pm in New York it's 1:15 pm in Buenos Aires and 5:15 pm in London — a slot that works for all three. You click that hour tile, confirm the highlight looks reasonable in every row, then use Link to this selection to send the exact time to the group, or Google Calendar to drop it straight into a calendar.

Common snags

  • Day rollover. A time that is late evening in one city can be the next morning in another. The +1 and date labels flag this, so check them before sharing.
  • Daylight saving. Zone labels like EDT and BST change with daylight saving, so a conversion you saved months ago may not hold. Re-check the grid close to the meeting date.
  • Weekend columns. If Mark Weekends is on and a proposed slot falls in a shaded column, someone's weekend is being crossed.
  • JavaScript. The converter will not run if JavaScript is disabled in your browser.

WTB is built for exactly this task — comparing several zones at a glance and turning the result into a shareable meeting time — so the three-step flow above covers most scheduling needs without any manual arithmetic.