When you are studying a long way from home, the question you ask twenty times a day is whether it is a reasonable hour to ring. This page puts your home time zone and your study time zone side by side, both ticking, so you can look instead of doing the arithmetic in your head at midnight.
It is built for international students, for the ones doing a placement abroad, and for anybody whose family lives on the wrong side of a sleep schedule. Two lists, one button, and the two clocks keep running after that.
Honest detail: it shows the clock, not the calendar. The times update every second, but nothing here knows whether it is a good moment to call, whether someone is asleep, or whether you have a lecture in twenty minutes. That judgement stays with you.
See the current time in your home country and study country side by side. Never miss a call home again.
How it works
Two dropdowns with the same eleven options in each: Eastern (New York), Central (Chicago), Mountain (Denver), Pacific (Los Angeles), London, Paris, Dubai, India (Kolkata), China (Shanghai), Japan (Tokyo) and Sydney. The page loads with home on Eastern and study already set to London, which is the pair a lot of people need anyway.
Press Show Times and two cards appear, Home and Study. Each card carries the time down to the second in 12-hour format, the full date with weekday and month, and the underlying time zone name so you can see what was actually picked. The pair refreshes every second, so the digits move and the time never goes stale while the tab sits open.
Pick the same zone for both and it refuses rather than showing you a pointless mirror: “Home and study time zones are the same. Please select different time zones.” Reset stops the clock and clears the cards, which matters because the refresh runs on an interval that would otherwise keep going in the background.
A worked example
Home is India (Kolkata) and study is London. In the summer the UK is on British Summer Time and India is always 5:30 ahead of UTC, so the gap is 4 hours 30 minutes with India in front. London showing 8:00:00 AM on Monday means home is showing 12:30:00 PM the same morning. That is a fine window for a call.
Flip it around. London at 9:00:00 PM puts home at 1:30:00 AM on Tuesday, which is why the date on the second card has rolled over. The date line is doing useful work: whenever it differs from the other card, somebody on this call is in a different day.
Now change study to Pacific. Los Angeles is UTC minus 7 in summer and Tokyo is UTC plus 9, a 16 hour gap. Los Angeles 8:00:00 AM Monday lines up with Tokyo 12:00:00 AM Tuesday, right on midnight. In winter that gap widens to 17 hours, because Los Angeles moves its clocks and Tokyo does not.
What the clocks do not do
The eleven zones are the whole menu. If your city is not on the list, pick the nearest one with the same offset and the time will be right, even though the label says somewhere else. Half-hour and 45-minute offsets only come through properly for the zones offered here, so a quick check against your phone’s clock is worth doing once.
Daylight saving is handled by the browser rather than by the page, which means it is handled correctly and silently. The consequence is that your gap changes twice a year without warning: India to the UK is 5 hours 30 minutes in winter and 4 hours 30 in summer. If a call suddenly seems an hour out, the clocks moved somewhere.
Nothing is remembered between visits, and there is no third clock. Two zones is the design: enough to answer “can I ring now”, not enough to plan a conference across four countries. For that, open it twice.
Other tools
- Procrastination Tracker — when the hours go somewhere other than the desk
- Reading Speed Test — find out how many pages an hour actually is
- Reading Streak Tracker — keep the daily count going across time zones
Frequently asked questions
Does it update on its own?
Yes, every second, so the seconds digit keeps moving and the time stays current. Leave the tab open and it keeps running; press Reset and it stops, because the interval is cleared rather than left ticking.
Does it handle daylight saving?
It does, through your browser, so the times are always the real local times. What changes is the gap between your two cards, since one country may shift and the other not. Twice a year your usual window moves by an hour.
What if my city is not listed?
Choose the closest city in the same time zone. The card shows the zone name it used, so you can sanity check it against your phone once. Getting within the same offset gives you a correct time even if the label is a few hundred kilometres out.
Why is the date different on one card?
Because one of you has already crossed midnight. The date line is included exactly for that, and it is the fastest way to spot that your evening is somebody’s tomorrow morning before you dial.
Can I compare more than two places?
No, this shows two side by side. Two is deliberate: it answers the question people actually ask, which is whether home and where you are now line up. Anything wider belongs in a world clock app with more cards than you need.